Space Travel

Launch

The "Interstellar" portion of the Movie begins with a rocket launch from earth, sending the protagonists into space to begin their journey across the universe. The equations for the launch being outlined here.

One of the complications with rockets is that while force from thrust remains the same as long as the engine is buring at the same rate, the mass of the rocket changes as fuel is expended. Therefore things that need to be accounted for are

• Mass of the rocket
• mass of the fuel(start)
• rate at which fuel is expended
• escape velocity
  • which is given by
  • though if the engine continues to fire as the rocket leaves the planet's gravity well it doesn't ever need to actually reach escape velocity because thrust can accomodate for gravity pulling it back to the planet

Travel

Space travel in Interstellar is essentially unchanged from that in reality. However in the ship in the movie the characters get to enjoy artificial gravity. Several science fiction works feature some kind of artificial gravity, but where as sometimes it is presented as some sort of unexplainable technology, the basis for it in Interstellar is centripetal force. As the ship travels it rotates, so for the people standing at the edge of the radius the normal force is the cause of their acceleration, making it seem as though they are being driven into the floor of the ship.