@kimholder How can I see a "count down clock" for your bounty? It says 2 days - does that mean 36 to 60 hours? I'd rather a "rocket scientist" amateur or otherwise answer it and I'm wondering if someone else is working on it. If nobody is working on it, I can take everyones thoughts and add some mathemagic and try.
@uhoh the bounty started on July 24 at 21:12 UTC. It can be awarded after at least the first day, and up to 24 hours after the last day. In case you haven't seen it, there is more info here - space.stackexchange.com/help/bounty
@RussellBorogove just to let you know, uhoh is jonesin' for another answer on that question about how big a planet a rocket can launch from. Hohmannfan hasn't had the chance to work in the T/W aspect into his answer, and it was a pretty key point you raised there. If you can stand to take one more crack at it, you seem to be the guy.
not that the current answer isn't good, just sayin.
Uhoh, you take an answer if I fix atmospheric density and scale height at Earth standard? I definitely do not have time to update my sim's atmospheric model.
Okay, simplifying assumptions: * delta-v to orbit including atmospheric and gravity losses is 10,000m/s per surface g. Seems to hold for Earth, Mars, and our agreed-on Earthtoo.
* Available engines are RL10, J-2, F-1, M-1.
* No more than 1 quadrillion engines allowed on a stage.
hell, sure sounds close though. If it gets to a quadrillion, tweaking the assumptions doesn't sound like it would make an important difference. would it?
This one's a python script rather than a spreadsheet. It's a total rabbit hole, though. For the big planets, final acceleration at stage burnout gets up in the 20-30g range, so I need a rule to reduce the staging ratio as thugs get bigger. I didn't get as far as working out the required stage diameter to support all these engines either...
When I was in high school, I was a member of our "Rocket Club", which competed in the Team America Rocketry Challenge. Basically, it was about making model rockets to fulfill certain requirements which changed every year, things like making an exact height, exact flight time, maximum weight, etc.
We had a software, I think it was called "SpaceCAD", which we could use to create rocket designs. The software would tell us things like what the center of gravity, maximum height, stability, etc. would be. It was pretty fun to mess around with the settings to see what crazy nonsense rockets we could make.
