Can rocketry become more efficient?

Question

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

Answer 1

Start by looking up “tyranny of the rocket equation”