Do you need fuel in space?

The most significant use of fuel for a spacecraft, once it has reached its orbit or been inserted on its trajectory, is for attitude control. In order to maintain effective pointing of communications antennae, solar arrays, and scientific instruments, a spacecraft must adjust its attitude.

How much fuel do you need to get to space?

Summary: Researchers have developed a mathematical model that describes how rotating detonation engines work. It takes a lot of fuel to launch something into space. Sending NASA’s Space Shuttle into orbit required more than 3.5 million pounds of fuel, which is about 15 times heavier than a blue whale.

How much fuel does it take to get to light speed?

If you wanted to accelerate to 0.866 times the speed of light (about 260 million meters per second), you’d need a hundred thousand trillion (100 000 000 000 000 000) joules of energy. That’s the equivalent of 2.5 billion (2 500 000 000) liters of gasoline.

What happens if you run out of fuel in space?

If you run out of fuel once out of the orbit of Earth, you will continue to move really fast because there is no friction in space. Your path will be bent by the gravity of everything, but only nearby (think inside the solar system) and massive (think the Sun, Earth, Jupiter, etc.)

How fast is 1G in space?

That mass ratio and 5,000 km/sec exhaust velocity give us delta-V of 5,500 km/sec. So Rocinante’s maximum practical speed is 2,750 km/sec, if it wants to come to a stop at the target. At 1 G, which seems to be the standard acceleration in Expanse universe, a ship takes 78 hours to reach 2,750 km/sec.

How long would you have to accelerate at 1G to reach light speed?

From Earth’s frame of reference, if you’re accelerating at a constant rate of 1 g, then you’d reach near the speed of light in about a year, having covered about 0.5 light-years in distance.