25% sounds super disappointing from a laymans perspective and not very "revolutionary" in the grand scheme of time and space.
Can't wait until AI will be able to iterate advanced engineering designs in simulation space at incredible speed.
Can't wait until AI will be able to iterate advanced engineering designs in simulation space at incredible speed.
The only way is to set up industries on the moon to build the ships and equipment necessary to expand through the solar system.
The limiters on engine efficiency at this point are mostly materials and costs, and even the latter are coming down with better fuels (eg Methane, which is extremely popular with rockets debuting this decade) and different design philosophies (eg SpaceX's Raptor engine, which is supposedly under $1M per engine while being the most advanced flight tested rocket engine out there).
The only two ways to get 'sci-fi style rocket is either nuclear, or to beam energy to the rocket from outside with giant lasers.
1. air launch, which boils down to using the O2 in the air rather than carrying it with you
2. mass driver, which needs to be in a vacuum
3. gravity slingshots
But, yeah, we need a fusion drive.
Project HARP[0] disagrees. Launched a payload 110 miles (177km) into space using a 120 foot (36m) long cannon. This was in the 1960s.
Rockets are operating at pretty decent efficiency, 25% improvment on an internal combusion engine would be mind blowing and make EVs way less interetsting.
There are theoretical maximum efficencies for various types of engines due to thermodynamics. You always lose energy to heat. Entropy is a b**.