You see video of rockets with munitions in them like surface -to-air and plane mounted rockets and they seem to move so quick. Why do these massive rockets seem to move slow? Is it payload? Do they speed up as they reach the stratosphere?
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When they lift off the ground, yes, they’re quite slow. A huge percentage of the weight of the rocket is fuel, so when it first lifts off the pad, the thrust produced is only a little higher than the weight of the rocket. As they get lighter, the thrust to weight ratio gets higher, and the further up in the atmosphere they are, the more thrust the engines make.
The other part of this is perception of speed. The speed is a lot less obvious as they get further away though due to perspective and relativity. If you’ve ever watched a jet fly across the sky, they don’t look like they’re really moving all that fast. However, if you were 35 feet away rather than 35,000, it’d zoom past you in the blink of an eye.
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