habryka comments on An Actually Intuitive Explanation of the Oberth Effect

[habryka]

I would have appreciated an explanation of what the basic Oberth Effect is. Even just the first two sentences from Wikipedia would have made me a bunch more interested in reading the rest of the post:

In astronautics, a powered flyby, or Oberth maneuver, is a maneuver in which a spacecraft falls into a gravitational well and then uses its engines to further accelerate as it is falling, thereby achieving additional speed.^[1] The resulting maneuver is a more efficient way to gain kinetic energy than applying the same impulse outside of a gravitational well. The gain in efficiency is explained by the Oberth effect, wherein the use of a reaction engine at higher speeds generates a greater change in mechanical energy than its use at lower speeds.