I don't believe the author is being very serious here. Their comparison with Starship forgot to normalize for propellant mass, which is one of the more dishonest comparison figures I've seen in my lifetime. Nobody's microwave has a higher specific impulse than the Raptor engine, nevermind nine of them.
Well sure. But the Starship does, so you either have to scale up the space drive or scale down the Raptor engine to get a fair comparison. "power to weight payload lift capability" is a completely facetious comparison if your impulse is too weak to leave the atmosphere.
A middle-schooler could tell you how this goes. The microwave probably weighs ~80lbs to lift 100lbs of rocks. A single Raptor engine has a thrust-to-weight ratio of 200 - the microwave has a ratio of 1.2.
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[ 4.8 ms ] story [ 22.7 ms ] threadA middle-schooler could tell you how this goes. The microwave probably weighs ~80lbs to lift 100lbs of rocks. A single Raptor engine has a thrust-to-weight ratio of 200 - the microwave has a ratio of 1.2.
If you're responsible for this circus, you might as well admit it now. God forbid you've invested money into this project, this one's bleak pal.