I was watching a video of a Saturn 5 Rocket launch and I was amazed at how much fuel was used and how massive the explosion at the beginning was (and how massive the continuous fuel burn was).
But it got me thinking can we, in the future, develop rockets which can lift more payload per gallon of fuel or are all of our rockets equally efficient in terms of the rocketry version of “Miles per Gallon” because of some law of physics which we already mastered?
And I know there are alternatives like Space Elevators, but I’m specifically curious about rockets.
In: 6
Chemical rockets? a little but, but not much. We’re pretty close to the best we’re gonna do there. There are plenty of other spacecraft propulsion methods, but currently existing and possible but not yet tested, that are *wayyy* more efficient than chemical rockets, but they’re also low-thrust, which means they’re only useful when already in space and not for the actual launch.
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