News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on China successfully launches its largest reusable rocket. Parent comment

Re:China successfully launches its largest reusable rocket by mabbo on Sunday August 11, 2019 @08:23AM (#20667827)
"Altitude" is a weird metric for rockets because going up is useless- you immediately fall back down.

Achieving orbit requires a horizontal velocity many times higher than the vertical velocity achieved.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:China successfully launches its largest reusable rocket by liability on Sunday August 11, 2019 @10:56AM (#20668430)
They may well have provided more relevant figures which the reporter or editor failed to understand the value of and consequently emitted in favor of the figure that played to their "space is up" worldview.
[ Parent | on HN ]