The Oberth Effect. I’ve seen a bunch of awful attempts at the “why” and some “we... | Hacker News

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		karatestomp on April 27, 2020 \| parent \| context \| favorite \| on: Ask HN: What scientific phenomenon do you wish som... The Oberth Effect. I’ve seen a bunch of awful attempts at the “why” and some “well it’s just in the math, so there” but nothing satisfying.

knzhou on April 27, 2020 [–]

I answered this here: https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/287101/where-doe...

The basic answer is that the extra energy that goes to the rocket comes from harvesting the kinetic energy that the fuel itself had by virtue of being in the moving rocket.

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