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A comment on NASA Validates Revolutionary Propulsion Design for Deep Space Missions. Parent comment

Re:NASA Validates Revolutionary Propulsion Design for Deep S... by grogenaut on Saturday April 01, 2023 @04:16PM (#35403669)
From 10% to 35% is a 25% improvement, you're still at 35%... From 70 to 95% is a 25% improvement, but it's a lot more. Going from 98 to 99% is only 1% but also like really a 10x improvment.

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**.

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Re:NASA Validates Revolutionary Propulsion Design for Deep S... by Lichtso on Saturday April 01, 2023 @04:42PM (#35403873)
Technically, from 10% of something to 35% of something is a 350% improvement or a 25 percent point improvement.

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

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Re:NASA Validates Revolutionary Propulsion Design for Deep S... by grogenaut on Saturday April 01, 2023 @05:32PM (#35404295)
yes but people often conflate/confuse that... saying the delta in %'s... not % improvement. I agree with you, I'm attempting to point out how a small % increase is a huge actual improvement. This GP was saying that a 25% improvment in the efficiency of a rocket engine was not much to a layman.
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Re:NASA Validates Revolutionary Propulsion Design for Deep S... by dotancohen on Saturday April 01, 2023 @05:25PM (#35404232)
Actually, from 10% of something to 35% of something is a 250% improvement. You already had the first 10%.
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