How many booster stages would it take to even go to the moon or Mars? Supposedly those ICBMs can reach anywhere in the world in no more than about 30 minutes. That itself wouldn't take a terrible amount of fuel but it is used quickly to achieve the high speeds. It's just under 25k miles around the world, so adding in space for reaching altitude and falling back down - around 12.5 to 13k miles to hit the opposite side of the world. It is about 239k miles to the moon. Using rough/stupid/amateur calculations, it would take at least 12 of the boosters used by the Russian ICBM to get to the moon (without knowing how to calculate the difference in our atmosphere versus deep space). The booster (or 2) might be able to launch us into space though.
Bah. I'm missing all kinds of variables that I don't even know about. This is at best a WAG, but I don't think these would be capable of boosting that much weight since they are designed for a much lighter (comparatively) payload. I think they would "blow their load" too quickly to be able to lift more weight and either burn/blow up or just sit on the launchpad burning the ground.
It was fun trying to flesh it out though.
I guess this is one of the rare times we can say "this is rocket science" instead of "this ain't rocket science".
Can we use that tech to travel to the other planets + obviously load will slow it down but just a thought
How many booster stages would it take to even go to the moon or Mars? Supposedly those ICBMs can reach anywhere in the world in no more than about 30 minutes. That itself wouldn't take a terrible amount of fuel but it is used quickly to achieve the high speeds. It's just under 25k miles around the world, so adding in space for reaching altitude and falling back down - around 12.5 to 13k miles to hit the opposite side of the world. It is about 239k miles to the moon. Using rough/stupid/amateur calculations, it would take at least 12 of the boosters used by the Russian ICBM to get to the moon (without knowing how to calculate the difference in our atmosphere versus deep space). The booster (or 2) might be able to launch us into space though.
You are very smart and now I feel dumb
Bah. I'm missing all kinds of variables that I don't even know about. This is at best a WAG, but I don't think these would be capable of boosting that much weight since they are designed for a much lighter (comparatively) payload. I think they would "blow their load" too quickly to be able to lift more weight and either burn/blow up or just sit on the launchpad burning the ground.
It was fun trying to flesh it out though.
I guess this is one of the rare times we can say "this is rocket science" instead of "this ain't rocket science".