One tank of fuel? Wow, how are you, um, wow, I can't process this.
There's literally no way to gauge miles per gallon or something on a rocket, that's not how it works
Do you think that the astronauts in the rocket were running the engine the whole time? The lunar lander system that they went to the moon with you know it floats to the moon in zero gravity right? Based on its momentum imparted by the rockets that help it break through and away from the gravity of Earth? Most of the fuel is used in these stages, breaking Earth gravity, then turning around and slowing down backwards when in order to insert themselves into moon orbit, and then leaving moon orbit and going back to earth
Wernher von Braun said in the late fifties that a rocket to the moon would have to be the size of the Empire State Building to contain sufficient fuel for the trip. His scientific opinion apparently changed with the script when the Apollo Mission was abruptly declared in the late sixties.
Weight. Every pound your rocket weighs versus your thrust is a pound that you cannot have in payload. A rocket made in the '50s would weigh so much they would have to add fuel, which is also weight. There's a point where it can become a runaway cycle where the weight and extra fuel don't make the rocket better. In the 50s when he said this he was 100% right. But the innovation and engineering that the American space program did to create the specialized launch vehicle Saturn 5 was amazing. Up until then every single astronaut was sent into space atop an ICBM ballistic missile repurposed for the space program. They developed Saturn 5 and it didn't need to be the size of the space program because it had 7.5 million pounds of thrust
One tank of fuel? Wow, how are you, um, wow, I can't process this.
There's literally no way to gauge miles per gallon or something on a rocket, that's not how it works
Do you think that the astronauts in the rocket were running the engine the whole time? The lunar lander system that they went to the moon with you know it floats to the moon in zero gravity right? Based on its momentum imparted by the rockets that help it break through and away from the gravity of Earth? Most of the fuel is used in these stages, breaking Earth gravity, then turning around and slowing down backwards when in order to insert themselves into moon orbit, and then leaving moon orbit and going back to earth
Wernher von Braun said in the late fifties that a rocket to the moon would have to be the size of the Empire State Building to contain sufficient fuel for the trip. His scientific opinion apparently changed with the script when the Apollo Mission was abruptly declared in the late sixties.
Weight. Every pound your rocket weighs versus your thrust is a pound that you cannot have in payload. A rocket made in the '50s would weigh so much they would have to add fuel, which is also weight. There's a point where it can become a runaway cycle where the weight and extra fuel don't make the rocket better. In the 50s when he said this he was 100% right. But the innovation and engineering that the American space program did to create the specialized launch vehicle Saturn 5 was amazing. Up until then every single astronaut was sent into space atop an ICBM ballistic missile repurposed for the space program. They developed Saturn 5 and it didn't need to be the size of the space program because it had 7.5 million pounds of thrust