Rockets not carrying fuel.

From this web page, the weight of the shuttle external tank with the
liquid oxygen and hydrogen is 1.6 million pounds:

EXTERNAL TANK
http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/...ewsref/et.html

But the amount of liquid oxygen that is burned is only 2,787 pounds
per second and the amount of hydrogen 465 pounds per second.

Nanotube productions methods are advancing quickly. Suppose it is
possible to make a fuel line of carbon nanotube material hundreds of
kilometers long. Could fuel be pumped up to a rocket accelerating to
orbital velocity?
What would be the fuel requirements for a rocket that did not carry
its own fuel? Say a rocket with the payload capacity of the shuttle
and with engines of the efficiency of the shuttle main engines?



Bob Clark