Last night when Elon Musk appeared on the Simpsons and talked about his Dragon Spacecraft, Lisa points that for a man who likes electric cars he sure burns a lot of rocket fuel.
He further tweeted
Elon Musk later twitted about it describing that it is not possible to get rocket out of the earth using electric energy.
If u saw @TheSimpsons and wonder why @SpaceX doesn't use an electric rocket to reach orbit, it is cuz that is impossible
Musk continued on tweeting "Reason is Newton's Third Law. In vacuum, there is nothing to "push" against. You must react against ejected mass … Ion thrusters are great, but have extremely tiny force (photon thruster even less). Must have more thrust than weight or you don't go up." He further tweeted
And pls don't ask me about space elevators until someone at least builds a carbon nanotube structure longer than a footbridge.
Final one: anything launched by a railgun (if you could ever reach ~ Mach 27) would explode upon exiting the barrel in our dense atmosphere
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