The pure, theoretical rocket equation still scales linearly, the tyranny lies in the hard limit of how much mass you can theoretically accelerate out of a gravi

The pure, theoretical rocket equation still scales linearly, the tyranny lies in the hard limit of how much mass you can theoretically accelerate out of a gravity well per unit off fuel. But bigger rockets can get closer to that theoretical optimum because some dead weight components remain fixed-size and because some masses scale with surface instead of volume. Rockets can scale better than linearly with size, but they will never exceed the rocket equation.