How does a rocket leave the Earth?
Thrust, insane speeds, stages dropped in mid-flight… Leaving Earth has less to do with magic than with physics, and an unreasonable amount of fuel. Explained without equations, promise. Sending an object into space is a bit like throwing a pebble hard enough that it never comes back down. On paper, it's simple. In practice, you need a machine as tall as a building, filled to the brim with stuff that would love nothing more than to explode, and steered with millimeter precision. Here's how it works, in four ideas.
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