Rocketry

11: Rocketry

Status: planned. This module is scoped but not yet written. The scope below is the commitment; it is here so you can see where the curriculum is going and tell us if the plan is wrong.

Why getting to orbit is hard, quantitatively.

Planned lessons

• The rocket equation, derived from conservation of momentum
• Why staging exists
• Delta-v budgets for real destinations
• Gravity losses and why rockets turn sideways early
• Why the Moon is easier to reach than it looks, and Mars harder

Prerequisites

• Module 10

Intended approach

Prose plus a delta-v calculator. Nothing here needs new astronomy.

Want this sooner?

Say so in Discussions, demand genuinely reorders the queue. Better still, write a lesson: see CONTRIBUTING.md. A single lesson following the lab pattern is a complete, useful contribution.

If you want to work through this material now without waiting, say so in Discussions and someone will point you at good sources. The reading list is not the bottleneck; the lab-shaped version is.