h (Rand Simberg) wrote in message . ..
On Sun, 11 Jul 2004 09:39:04 -0700 (PDT), in a place far, far away,
(william mook) made the phosphor on my
monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that:

whining and victimhood snipped

I mean, how often does anyone talk about the rocket equation? You
know,

Vf = Ve * LN(1/(1-u)) ?

where u=propellant fraction and Ve=exhaust speed, and Vf = final speed
of stage

and how that impacts all aspects of rockets.

let alone more interesting things like Calculus of Variations and how
to use to to figure out optimal take off thrust, or Goddard
Trajectories, or - anything useful really.

I mean it would be cool to see an analysis of each rocket stage in
terms of the rocket equation - the performance of a stack related to
the calculus of variations computation - and the actual trajectory
compared to the goddard trajectory for the stack.

There is already a moderated newsgroup to discuss those things. It's
called sci.space.tech.

Great, so you can point me to the discussions I've described?