Specific impulse is a measure of how efficiently a rocket or jet engine uses propellant, expressed as the thrust produced per unit weight of propellant consumed per second, conventionally given in seconds. A higher specific impulse means an engine extracts more thrust from a given mass of propellant, which is why it is the standard figure of merit for comparing propulsion systems from chemical rockets to ion thrusters. Chemical rocket engines typically achieve specific impulses in the low hundreds of seconds, while electric propulsion systems can exceed several thousand seconds at far lower thrust.
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