Will a rocket engine, in space, accelerate to its designed maximum thrust and reach it's max speed...OR?

Question

will the rocket continue to accelerate as long as there is propellant even after reaching full thrust.?

Answer 1

As long as the rocket is firing, it will continue to accelerate.

Answer 2

As long as the propellant lasts the rocket will accelerate. Remember, exhaust velocity of a rocket engine is small compared to its final velocity. This is because the exhaust doesn't know (so to speak) how fast the rocket is going at any one time, so if, say, exhaust velocity is 4,000 meters per second, the rocket can accelerate to a velocity much higher than that, because the exhaust velocity is relative to the rocket, not space or the atmosphere, as far as physical laws of action and reaction are concerned. Incidentally 4000 meters per second is a high exhaust velocity for chemical rockets. Ion rockets do much better, but due to the low mass of the exhaust, accelerations are much lower.

Answer 3

If there is enough propellent, and distance allowed, the rocket
can only reach thrust equalibrium. The reason that rockets
shut off the thrust of propellent, is to conserve fuel. If you had
the case of continued acceleration, you could achieve light
speed, and Einstien proved mathimatically the impossibility
of that.

Answer 4

Even if there is only a small amount of propellant left and the engine is running at, say, 10% of max. thrust, the rocket still accelerates. It doesn't accelerate at the level it did at max. thrust, but there is still *some* acceleration.

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Answer 5

ask scotty.