Comment by marze
2 days ago
That is a trajectory optimized for payload mass, with a set amount of first stage thrust. It is quite typical, historically. It just looks extra slow since the New Glenn rocket is quite enormous relative to historic rockets.
An impressive first flight by any measure!
No, that's not true. Back of the envelope estimates for New Glenn's launch tonight give a thrust to weight ratio of 1.2.
For the Space Shuttle, t/w at launch was 1.5, the same is true for Falcon and Starship. Delta Heavy was around 1.3. Saturn V was 1.2. None of this has anything to do with optimizing the trajectory.
Historic rockets around 1.2, including Shuttle, check your numbers. Starship is not a "historic rocket". It and Falcon 9 fly a trajectory that is optimized for something else, not max payload for a set first stage thrust.
The shuttle stack weighted 4.5 million lbs at takeoff and had a total thrust of about 6.8 million lbf, giving a thrust to weight ratio of 1.5.
3 replies →
This SE answer also calculates shuttle liftoff TWR to around 1.5:
https://space.stackexchange.com/a/58800