Ideal rocket equation[edit]

Rocket mass ratios versus final velocity calculated from the rocket equation

Main article: Tsiolkovsky rocket equation

The ideal rocket equation, or the Tsiolkovsky rocket equation, can be used to study the motion of
vehicles that behave like a rocket (where a body accelerates itself by ejecting part of its mass,
a propellant, with high speed). It can be derived from the general equation of motion for variablemass systems as follows: when no external forces act on a body (Fext = 0) the variable-mass
system motion equation reduces to[2]

If the velocity of the ejected propellant, vrel, is assumed have the opposite direction as the
rocket's acceleration, dv/dt, the scalarequivalent of this equation can be written as

from which dt can be canceled out to give

Integration by separation of variables gives

By rearranging and letting v = v1 - v0, one arrives at the standard form of

the ideal rocket equation:

where m0 is the initial total mass, including propellant, m1 is the final total
mass, vrel is the effective exhaust velocity (often denoted as ve), and
v is the maximum change of speed of the vehicle (when no external
forces are acting).