Thing I’ve been wrong about for a long time: I remembered that the rocket equation “is exponential”, but I thought it was exponential in dry mass. It’s not, it’s linear in dry mass and exponential in Δv.
This explains a lot of times where I’ve been reading SF and was mildly surprised at how cavalier people seemed to be about payload, like allowing astronauts to have personal items.
I mean, they won’t say this out loud to the passengers/astronauts, but with a fairly efficient reaction engine, any “extra” mass is usable for thrust in an emergency.
Thing I’ve been wrong about for a long time: I remembered that the rocket equation “is exponential”, but I thought it was exponential in dry mass. It’s not, it’s linear in dry mass and exponential in Δv.
This explains a lot of times where I’ve been reading SF and was mildly surprised at how cavalier people seemed to be about payload, like allowing astronauts to have personal items.
I mean, they won’t say this out loud to the passengers/astronauts, but with a fairly efficient reaction engine, any “extra” mass is usable for thrust in an emergency.