[wolfekeeper]

coe

hi again. other people on different fora have been debating the question. member "uatu" on the german allmystery.de forum has provided what I consider the definitive solution with a graph illustrating the key parameters. my primitive derivation indicated an initial parabolic rise in ke, followed by an asymptote at around 3/4 fuel consumption. the rigorous expression provided by "uatu" does the same followed by a sharp downturn. this derivation seems to be rock-solid, in my limited mathematical abilities. bottom line: the coe is safe and emmy noether can rest peacefully.

FWIW this is somewhat subtle stuff. There was actually some disagreement about the relationships between rockets and energy but it was laid to rest by Hermann Oberth.

He reported that at one point in his investigations of rocketry he believed he had completely disproven conservation of energy too, but he later was able to show that he hadn't.

See:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oberth_effect

This links to 'Ways to spaceflight' which describes his mathematics which covers this and other topics.