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Philosophy of rockets to orbit

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Subject: Philosophy of rockets to orbit
From: eagleson...@gmail.com (Douglas Eagleson)
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by: Douglas Eagleson - Fri, 2 Dec 2022 21:58 UTC

I was once considering the difficulty of making orbital rockets. I started out with the idea of mass thrust ratio. This leads to the possibility of having small little rockets reach orbit as long as the fuel to mass ratio equals or betters the large rockets. Leading to the observation that little rockets, say 100 lbs are not getting to orbit. But aircraft launched rockets can reach orbit.

So what gives. This might be termed rocket science. When the rocket goes supersonic there is a rather significant drag. So my question is does a mass to drag ratio relation drive a minima for absolute rocket mass? Assuming equal specific impulse fuel.

"Ada is PL/I trying to be Smalltalk. -- Codoso diBlini

tech / sci.space.policy / Philosophy of rockets to orbit

Subject	Author
Philosophy of rockets to orbit	Douglas Eagleson