Submission timeline
2007–2026One slot for every year since HN launched. Height is that year's peak points; orange marks a 100+ point or 50+ comment breakout. Select a bar to open its strongest thread.
First comments on top threads
HN comment orderRight. This has been known for a long time. It's why rockets aren't much better than they were 40 years ago. Chemical fuels are as good as they can get. Space travel with chemical fuels is just barely feasible. In the 1960s, it was assumed that nuclear power would be necessary for space flight. Everybody involved knew the rocket equation. The original plan for Apollo included a nuclear upper stage. The engine (NERVA) was built and tested. A Nuclear Assembly…
I am dumbfounded: did they really not write the rocket equation? It is good to be accessible to everybody but, honestly, this seems like a silly omission.
Nice that we live on a planet with low enough gravity to get off of it. The article states that if the Earth was about 50% bigger, chemical rockets wouldn't be able to achieve escape velocity. Any species on a planet like that has a much much harder time getting into space.
Funny he didn't mention beaming the energy from the ground. At the time of writing (2012) NASA was experimenting with microwave transmission, but it seems they ran out of fund before succeeding... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beam-powered_propulsion
The first top-level comment from each of the four biggest threads, in HN’s own order. Excerpts are shortened; open a comment for full context.
- Breakout years
- 3
- Total points
- 502
- Total comments
- 394
100+ points or 50+ comments
reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking
reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking
Every submission
| Date | Title as submitted | By | Points | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2013-03-27 | NASA - The Tyranny of the Rocket Equation | nayuki | 3 | 0 |
| 2014-10-31 | The Tyranny of the Rocket Equation (2012)First breakout · Best thread | bane | 214 | 157 |
| 2018-06-29 | The Tyranny of the Rocket Equation (2012) | brudgers | 91 | 70 |
| 2019-10-29 | The Tyranny of the Rocket Equation (2012) | rfreytag | 83 | 45 |
| 2022-09-04 | The tyranny of the rocket equation (2012)Hall induction · Latest 20+ point return | brudgers | 111 | 122 |