Payloads on Rockets.....?

Question

My question is this...for each pound you want to launch into space and escape earth's influence....how much thrust from the SRB's or Saturn 5 is required?

Thanks for your help, this question is driving me crazy!!!

Answer 1

In order to escape Earth's gravity, an object needs to be travelling about 25,000 miles per hour. It gets a bit more complicated, because the Earth is pulling you back all the time, so you need enough thrust to accelerate your mass plus overcome the Earth's pull. The faster you do this, the faster you leave Earth and its gravity behind, so a higher thrust is more efficient.

It gets even more complicated because you're lifting your fuel as well, and the weight of the fuel keeps changing as you use it up. There's a formula called the "rocket equation" which takes into account the weight of the craft when full, weight when empty, the efficiency of the engine, and a few other things.

The Saturn V first stage produced a maximum thrust of about 7.65 million pounds.

Answer 2

A good rocket can be about 2% payload. It's maximum thrust is at takeoff when it's only pulling about 2 G's. That comes out to around 100 pounds of thrust for every pound of payload.