4 ms·
That looks like an argument that you need more than twice as much fuel to get twice as much payload to orbit -- that fuel requirements go up more than linearly.
by repsilat 7y ago
That looks like an argument that you need more than twice as much fuel to get twice as much payload to orbit -- that fuel requirements go up more than linearly.
Maybe this is obvious, but two rockets can get twice as much payload to orbit using twice as much fuel. You can that up linearly all day long. (It holds for "twice as much", but the same argument doesn't work for "twice as fast" or other metrics.)
- DuskStar 7y agoX fuel can get Y payload to Z speed. To get that payload to 2 * Z speed, you need 2 * X + (X * (X / Y)) fuel, because the fuel counts as part of your payload for the first Z of speed. If X is 500t and Y is 5t, you now need 51,000t of fuel to achieve 2 * Z speed.
- mlyle 7y agoTo augment what Duskstar said, "twice as fast" is what counts: to get something to orbit with a steeper gravity well, you need more of a velocity change.