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by tankenmate
3300 days ago
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Actually having a higher percentage of mass for your propellant (fuel and oxidiser) compared to your total mass (minus payload which can vary flight to flight) is a good thing; it means you can deliver more mass to orbit. [0] Conversely the more mass you use to build your rocket the less mass you can deliver to orbit. For the F9FT the propellant mass fraction is 92.43% (507.5/549), and for the GSLV-III it is 86.56% (544/640). [1][2] If the GSLV-III had the same PMF as the F9FT its dry weight would drop from 86 tons to 45.5 tons. Then it would probably be able to deliver 25 to 26 tons to LEO, an increase of 2.5 times. I'm sure the ISRO will improve the mass fraction over time. It should be noted however that the F9 with all its single core iterations have been within 1% of each other propellant mass fraction wise. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propellant_mass_fraction [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/3lsm0q/f9ft_vs_f9v1... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geosynchronous_Satellite_Launc... [EDIT] minor grammar fix |
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