system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Do rockets have to account for the gravitational pull of the Sun?
gpt
If you're flying to the ISS or the Moon, "not really" or "not much".

So yes, a rocket is pulled by the gravity of the Sun. But so are the ISS, the Moon, and the Earth. Because we're all very close together, we all feel almost exactly the same pull from the Sun in almost exactly the same direction. If you're just worried about getting into low earth orbit, all you care about is your acceleration relative to the Earth, so you can ignore the effects of the Sun's gravity.

If you're talking about going to the Moon, we're starting to stretch this "not much" though. The Moon is far enough away that, depending on its position, it can feel about 0.5% more or less gravity from the Sun than the Earth does, or feel gravity in a slightly different direction. So if you're plotting a course to the Moon, the difference in the Sun's gravity is big enough to have make a small but potentially significant effect on your trajectory, and you'll want to take it into account if you really want to be accurate.

And of course, if you're going to another planet in the solar system, then the Sun is the main thing you care about. You want to escape Earth's gravity, and then move closer or further from the Sun, over a large distance where the Sun's gravity changes by a lot. Here you really must work against the Sun's gravity to move outwards etc, and you can't ignore it.