3 ms·
The Schwarzschild radius (sometimes historically referred to as the gravitational radius) is the radius of a sphere such that, if all the mass of an o
by anologwintermut 13y ago
The Schwarzschild radius (sometimes historically referred
to as the gravitational radius) is the radius of a sphere
such that, if all the mass of an object is compressed
within that sphere, the escape speed from the surface of
the sphere would equal the speed of light.
--Wikipedia
Personally, I think your project getting so big that not even light can escape is a far better image (your project would literally be a black hole) than the on the article implies where you cannot get a rocket of the surface.
- comrade_ogilvy 13y agoA rather stretched poetic usage of Schwarzschild radius, and it seems the author simply stumbled away from the denotational meaning. Nonetheless the metaphor worked for me. I am unaware of a specific name for the concept that a larger rocket has diminishing returns because of the disproportionate addition of fuel weight. Like the article suggests, one has to wrestle with the payload requirements to get out of this trap.