newtonian mechanics - Why are rockets so big?

I'm curious why rockets are so big in their size. Since both the gravitational potential one need to overcome in order to put thing into orbit, and the chemical energy burned from the fuel, are proportional to the mass, so if we shrink the rocket size, it would seem to be fine to launch satellites. So why not build small rocket say the size of human? I can imagine small rocket would be easier to manufacture in large quantities and easier to transport. And maybe someone can make a business out of small rocket, carrying one's own satellite.

Answer

The problem is what Konstantin Tsiolkovsky discovered 100 years ago: as speed increases, the mass required (in fuel) increases exponentially. This relation, specifically, is $$ \Delta v=v_e\ln\left(\frac{m_i}{m_f}\right) $$ where $v_e$ is the exhaust velocity, $m_i$ the initial mass and $m_f$ the final mass.

The above can be rearranged to get $$ m_f=m_ie^{-\Delta v/v_e}\qquad m_i=m_fe^{\Delta v/v_e} $$ or by taking the difference between the two, $$ M_f=1-\frac{m_f}{m_i}=1-e^{-\Delta v/v_e} $$ where $M_f$ is the exhaust mass fraction.

If we assume we are starting from rest to reach 11.2 km/s (i.e., Earth's escape velocity) with a constant $v_e=4$ km/s (typical velocity for NASA rockets), we'd need $$ M_f=1-e^{-11.2/4}=0.939 $$ which means almost 94% of the mass at launch needs to be fuel! If we have a 2000 kg craft (about the size of a car), we would need nearly 31,000 kg of fuel in a craft that size. The liquid propellant has a density similar to water (so 1000 kg/m$^3$), so you'd need an object with a volume of 31.0 m$^3$ to hold it. Our car sized object's interior would be around 3 m$^3$, a factor of 10 too small!

This means we need a bigger craft which means more fuel! And explains why this mass-speed relation has been dubbed "the tyranny of the rocket problem".

This also explains the fact that modern rockets are multi-staged. In an attempt to alleviate the required fuel, once a stage uses all of its fuel, it is released from the rocket and the next stage is ignited (doing this over land is dangerous for obvious reasons, hence NASA launching rockets over water), and the mass of the craft is lowered by the mass of the (empty) stage. More on this can be found at these two Physics.SE posts: