Rocket

A rocket is a projectile driven by the reaction of gases produced by a fast burning fuel. Some rockets are manned (e.g. Saturn V). Other rockets, for example missiles, are unmanned.

Unlike the jet engine, which is also a reaction engine, the rocket carries its own oxygen supply to burn and fume and it's totally independent of any surrounding atmosphere.

The name Rocket comes from the Italian rocchetta, meaning "bobbin" or "little spindle", given due to the similarity in shape to the bobbin or spool used to hold the thread to be fed to a spinning wheel.

ROCKETS IN WARFARE

In warfare the head of the rocket carries an explosive device. The military rocket was invented by the Chinese while using gunpowder. The earliest known use of rockets in war between Mongols and Chinese occurred in 1232.

In Europe, Konrad Kyeser described rockets in his military treatise Bellifortis around 1405.

Depiction of a rocket (1405)

Rockets carrying an explosive device were encountered in India in the 18th century by the British forces.

The rocket missile was re- invented by Sir William Congreve in England around 1805 and remained in use by various armies in the 19th century.

German rocket scientist Wernher von Braun invented the V-2 rocket for Nazi Germany.

During World War II, rockets were effectively used by aircraft, and by the Germans in their V-2 attacks in the London area in 1944-45.

Peenemünde Museum replica of V-2. By AElfwine at the French language Wikipedia,

During World War II more people were killed building V-2 Rockets than were killed by the rockets themselves.

Nazi Germany spent 50% more on the V2 rocket program than the U.S. did on the Manhattan Project to develop the atomic bomb.

Since World War II the devastating combination refined precise guidance systems with atomic warheads has produced rocket missiles which are the key to enter international power politics.

ROCKETS AS SPACE TRANSPORT

Rockets have been valued as fireworks over the last seven centuries, but the intense development as a means of propulsion to high attitudes - carrying payloads - started only in the interwar years.

Cyrano de Bergerac’s satirical novel L’Autre Monde (The Other World) published after the author's death, in 1657 suggested that rockets could carry humans into space.

In 1903 the Russian mathematician Konstantin Tsiolkovsky published a paper showing that liquid fuels and multistage rockets could attain lift-off for a spacecraft. His formulae are still in use.

In 1914 pioneer rocket scientist and New England physics professor Robert H. Goddard patented liquid rocket fuel, though he didn't get a rocket off the ground for another dozen years.

Robert H. Goddard was inspired to invent the rocket technology by H.G. Wells' 1898 novel The War of the Worlds.

Robert H. Goddard successfully launched the world's first liquid-fueled rocket at Auburn, Massachusetts on March 16, 1926. It rose 41 feet and went 184 feet, in 2.5 seconds.,

Goddard with a liquid oxygen-gasoline rocket (1926)

Wernher von Braun (March 23, 1912 – June 16, 1977) was the greatest German rocket scientist. Among his designs were the V-2 ballistic missile used by Germany during World War II and the Saturn V rocket used by NASA on the Apollo moon missions.

In 1928 the German film director Fritz Lang introduced the 5-4-3-2-1 when he used a backward countdown in his movie By Rocket To The Moon. He thought it would make things more suspenseful if the count is reversed.

The first successful launch of a V-2 /A4-rocket was made from Test Stand VII at Peenemünde, Germany on October 3, 1942.

21 months later, a V-2 rocket became the first man-made object to travel into space by crossing the Kármán line with the vertical launch of MW 18014 on June 20, 1944

Following World War II, Von Brann was secretly moved from Germany to the United States, along with about 1,600 other scientists, engineers, and technicians, as part of Operation Paperclip, where he developed the rockets that launched the United States' first space satellite Explorer 1, and the Apollo program manned lunar landings.

Von Braun in 1960

The Space Age begun in 1949 with the first rocket, a V2/WAC-Corporal, blasted into outer space from White Sands, Mexico.

Berthold Seliger launched a rocket with three stages and a maximum flight altitude of more than 100 kilometres near Cuxhaven in 1963. It was the only sounding rocket developed in Germany.

In 1920, The New York Times ridiculed Robert H. Goddard and claimed that rockets could not function in space. On July 17, 1969, a day after the Apollo 11 launch, the newspaper formally acknowledged their error.

Britain’s Black Arrow rocket launched the satellite Prospero into space from Woomera in South Australia to orbit the Earth on October 28, 1971. It was the first and last launch of a solely British space rocket.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos funded a team that searched the Atlantic Ocean for discarded NASA rockets. By 2013, the team had salvaged two rockets. After careful inspection, the team realized they found part of the rockets used to carry Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins to the moon on Apollo 11.

Falcon 9 Flight 20 (also known as Orbcomm OG2 M2), was a Falcon 9 space launch that occurred on December 21, 2015, the first time that the first stage of an orbital rocket made a successful return and vertical landing.

First stage of Falcon 9 flight 20 landing on a ground pad in December 2015

Electron is a two-stage orbital launch vehicle developed by New Zealand aerospace company Rocket Lab to cover the commercial small satellite launch segment (CubeSats). Its Rutherford engines are the first electric pump-fed engine to power an orbital rocket. Electron became the first rocket to reach orbit using an electric pump-fed engine on January 21, 2018.

On April 20, 2023, SpaceX conducted the Starship Flight Test, an orbital test flight that involved the inaugural launch of the Starship spacecraft coupled with the Super Heavy first stage booster. This mission established the Starship as the tallest and most robust rocket ever launched, producing double the thrust of the Saturn V rocket from the 1960s. The launch took place from the Starbase launch facility situated in the vicinity of Boca Chica, Texas. It exploded almost four minutes into the flight after it reached a peak altitude of 24 miles (39 km).

FUN ROCKET FACTS

Both of actor Jack Black's parents were rocket scientists.

Jack Black's mom, Judith Love Cohen, helped create the Abort-Guidance System which rescued the Apollo 13 astronauts. She went to work on the day she was in labor and took a printout of a problem she was working on to the hospital. She called her boss and said she'd finished the problem then gave birth to Jack Black.

The insulation of the fuel tanks on a Saturn V rocket was so good an ice cube placed inside would take eight years to melt.

Some rockets may reach speeds of up to 30'000 km/hr (Mach 25) when in orbit.

A rocket engine has to supply its own oxygen so it can burn fuel in outer space.

Source Hutchinson Encyclopedia