Why is it so difficult and costly to build a rocket which escapes Earths atmosphere?

Question

The rocket need not carry people or any payload. It only needa to be big enough to escape earths atmosphere. Why is this so hard to accomplish?

In: 0

Answer 1

To escape Earth’s atmosphere means going *at least* 20km up.

So lets assume you can build a rocket, like say a firework (r1) that, without a payload, can get 200m up. That seems like it should be simple enough to achieve.

You then need to build a rocket (r2) that can carry that rocket up 200m before launching it

And a rocket (r3) that can carry that rocket up 200m

And so on, until you reach r10 and you’re launching a massive rocket from ground level in order to lift a slightly less massive rocket, and so on. And at any point if anything goes even slightly wrong the whole thing can explode.