this post was submitted on 09 Jun 2025
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Civil Aviation
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What if I made a vehicle that for every bit faster you wanted it to go, it would dump mass at a fixed speed? Like, if you needed to go 80mph, it would calculate how many seats you'd have to throw out the back per minute.
Do you mean dump mass or forcefully eject mass? The former would do nothing except make future acceleration easier, while the latter is the same principle behind a rocket.
I was implying ejection when I wrote "throw out" to make this exactly a poorly-described rocket, but I can see where my humor fell flat on its face.
When I learned as a child that rockets accelerate by ejecting mass, I used to chuckle at the idea of a rocket with a high-value payload, but not enough fuel to maneuver towards Earth, so it launches hardware like seats and beds, bleeds oxygen, and then boots the astronauts.