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?
In: 16
Because they are so much bigger. This effects your perception of it in 2 ways.
First, if you see a big thing and a small thing moving at the same speed, the small thing looks like its moving faster. A 5m long rocket moving at 50 m/s will cover its own length 10 times every second. If the rocket is 50m long it only covers its length once every second which looks slower, even though they are going the same speed.
Second, large rockets do generally accelerate slower than small rockets. A surface to air missile doesn’t have to get to orbit, it just has to get up to speed quickly to reach its target. Therefore it burns it fuel really fast to accelerate as fast as possible then coasts at that top speed to its target. A big orbital rocket has to be efficient in order to reach its goal of orbit at all, and that generally means lower acceleration. Also, big orbital rockets are usually designed for people to eventually ride them so there are limits if they don’t want to kill their passengers.
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