Rocket Designer & Staging Lab
Design a rocket stage by stage — pick engines with real-world thrust and specific impulse, size the propellant tanks, set the payload — and the lab computes what your design can do: delta-v per stage from the Tsiolkovsky rocket equation, thrust-to-weight ratios, and whether the total budget clears low Earth orbit, a geostationary transfer, the Moon or Mars. Then press launch: a full ascent integration flies your rocket through gravity and atmospheric drag with a gravity-turn trajectory, plotting altitude, velocity and acceleration while the stages drop away. Gravity losses, drag losses and the brutal exponential of the rocket equation become visible — add more fuel and watch the payoff shrink.
Runs 100% in your browser — simulations are computed locally on your device.
Read the full guide to this tool
Notes
- The rocket equation Δv = Isp · g₀ · ln(m₀/m₁) is merciless: doubling propellant does not double delta-v, which is why staging — shedding dead mass mid-flight — is the only way chemical rockets reach orbit.
- Real ascent loses 1–2 km/s to gravity (thrusting upward while gravity pulls down) and a few hundred m/s to drag; the simulation integrates both, so a design with 9.4 km/s of vacuum delta-v can still fall short of orbit.
- Thrust-to-weight below 1 means the rocket cannot leave the pad; much above ~1.5 at liftoff wastes structure mass and batters the payload with g-forces — real first stages sit in a narrow band.
- Runs 100% in your browser — simulations are computed locally on your device.
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