The phrase "tyranny of the rocket equation" seems to go back at least as far as this 2012 NASA article: http://web.archive.org/web/20230725181037/https://www.n

The phrase "tyranny of the rocket equation" seems to go back at least as far as this 2012 NASA article: http://web.archive.org/web/20230725181037/https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/expeditions/expedition30/tryanny.html http://web.archive.org/web/20230725181037/https://www.nasa.g... More on the actual rocket equation can be found here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsiolkovsky_rocket_equation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsiolkovsky_rocket_equation