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by rafram 69 days ago
When you're riding a rocket that weighs 3.5 million pounds...
2 comments

Is that the Rocket or the Craft+Mission payload?

My understanding is it's on the order of 5-10 pounds of rocket juice to get one pound of something to LEO, thus the question.

At 3.5 mil pounds that has to be the full rocket. But quick [1]googling is giving an even higher total mass number...

1. https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/sls-5640-sls...

Mass higher up the rocket costs several multiples more mass in propellant and propellant handling lower in the rocket. And the more deltaV you want the higher the multiplication. (If I remember right some weight issues of some kind on the Apollo capsule and or lander required a common bulk head in the first stage to make up the performance loss!)

However cameras probably fall into the variance in astoraunt weight somewhat.