What is it about?
I analyze how a "100 tonne rocket" can be split into two stages to increase the final speed of its payload. To do so, I use a single parameter "beta" (= the second stage mass fraction) and show that an optimal value exists to maximize the payload's final speed. I take care to keep the symbols and definitions straightforward so that the reader does not get bogged down in a swamp of symbols and subscripts.
Featured Image
Photo by SpaceX on Unsplash
Why is it important?
With the advent of more launch providers (e.g., SpaceX, Rocket Lab, Firefly) and the prospect of the US and China returning to the Moon, I wanted to make a clear exposition of rocket staging for teachers and students. I could not find a good explanation as to why we need multi-stage rockets to get to Earth orbit, so I hope that this paper will provide teachers with a clear exposition they can confidently use in the classroom. In addition to the paper I provide a bunch of supplementary materials for teachers and students to get stuck in to the topic.
Perspectives
I write this after a certain engineering student showed me their homework that had questions on the rocket equation and staging. The "symbol salad" in his textbook was opaque to me, and that book (and his professor) provided no physical insight as to how staging works. So after some online research and my own calculations I came up with the idea of a simplified 2-stage rocket, and the paper followed naturally. Check out the Video Abstract I made at the Physics Education journal link to this paper. It was a lot of work to put together, and I got some expert help with the CGI and Matlab animations, but I had a blast making it. I hope you enjoy and learn something from it too.
Dr. Philip Blanco
Grossmont College
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Learning about rockets, in stages, Physics Education, May 2022, Institute of Physics Publishing,
DOI: 10.1088/1361-6552/ac6928.
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