Rocket

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For other uses, see Rocket (disambiguation).

A Soyuz-U, at Baikonur cosmodrome's Site 1/5 in Kazakhstan

A rocket (from Italian rocchetto "bobbin")[nb 1][1] is a missile, spacecraft, aircraft or other
vehicle that obtains thrust from a rocket engine. Rocket engine exhaust is formed entirely
from propellant carried within the rocket before use.[2] Rocket engines work by action and
reaction and push rockets forward simply by expelling their exhaust in the opposite
direction at high speed, and can therefore work in the vacuum of space.

In fact, rockets work more efficiently in space than in an atmosphere. Multistage rockets
are capable of attaining escape velocity from Earth and therefore can achieve unlimited
maximum altitude. Compared with airbreathing engines, rockets are lightweight and
powerful and capable of generating large accelerations. To control their flight, rockets rely
on momentum, airfoils, auxiliary reaction engines, gimballed thrust, momentum wheels,
deflection of the exhaust stream, propellant flow, spin, and/or gravity.

Rockets for military and recreational uses date back to at least 13th century China.[3]
Significant scientific, interplanetary and industrial use did not occur until the 20th century,
when rocketry was the enabling technology for the Space Age, including setting foot on the
Earth's moon. Rockets are now used for fireworks, weaponry, ejection seats, launch
vehicles for artificial satellites, human spaceflight, and space exploration.

Chemical rockets are the most common type of high power rocket, typically creating a high
speed exhaust by the combustion of fuel with an oxidizer. The stored propellant can be a
simple pressurized gas or a single liquid fuel that disassociates in the presence of a catalyst
(monopropellants), two liquids that spontaneously react on contact (hypergolic propellants),
two liquids that must be ignited to react, a solid combination of fuel with oxidizer (solid
fuel), or solid fuel with liquid oxidizer (hybrid propellant system). Chemical rockets store a
large amount of energy in an easily released form, and can be very dangerous. However,
careful design, testing, construction and use minimizes risks.

Contents
1 History
2 Types
3 Design
o 3.1 Components
o 3.2 Engines
o 3.3 Propellant
4 Uses
o 4.1 Military
o 4.2 Science and research
o 4.3 Spaceflight
o 4.4 Rescue
o 4.5 Hobby, sport, and entertainment
5 Noise
6 Physics
o 6.1 Operation
o 6.2 Forces on a rocket in flight
6.2.1 Drag
6.2.2 Net thrust
o 6.3 Total impulse
o 6.4 Specific impulse
o 6.5 Delta-v (rocket equation)
o 6.6 Mass ratios
o 6.7 Staging
o 6.8 Acceleration and thrust-to-weight ratio
o 6.9 Energy
6.9.1 Energy efficiency
6.9.2 Oberth effect
7 Safety, reliability and accidents
8 Costs and economics
9 See also
10 Notes
11 External links

History
Main article: History of rockets
Further information: Timeline of rocket and missile technology

The first gunpowder-powered rockets were developed in the medieval Chinese Song
dynasty, by the 13th century. The Chinese rocket technology was adopted by the Mongols
and the invention was spread via the Mongol invasions to the Middle East and Europe in
the mid 13th century.[4] The first gunpowder-powered rockets were developed during the
Song dynasty and by the 13th century. The Chinese rocket technology was adopted by the
Mongols and the invention was spread via the Mongol invasions to the Middle East and
Europe in the mid 13th century.[5] Rockets are recorded to have been used by the Song navy
in a military exercise dated to 1245. Internal-combustion rocket propulsion is mentioned in
a reference to 1264, recording that the 'ground-rat,' a type of firework, had frightened the
Empress-Mother Gongsheng at a feast held in her honor by her son the Emperor Lizong.[6]
Subsequently, rockets are included in the military treatise Huolongjing, also known as the
Fire Drake Manual, written by the Chinese artillery officer Jiao Yu in the mid-14th century.
This text mentions the first known multistage rocket, the 'fire-dragon issuing from the
water' (huo long chu shui), thought to have been used by the Chinese navy.[7]

Medieval and early modern rockets were used militarily as incendiary weapons in sieges.
Between 1270 and 1280, Hasan al-Rammah wrote al-furusiyyah wa al-manasib al-harbiyya
(The Book of Military Horsemanship and Ingenious War Devices), which included 107
gunpowder recipes, 22 of which are for rockets.[8][9] In Europe, Konrad Kyeser described
rockets in his military treatise Bellifortis around 1405.[10]

Drawing of a Chinese soldier lighting a rocket's fuse (1890)

Depiction of a rocket (1405)

William Congreve at the bombardment of Copenhagen (1807)

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. The Italian term was adopted into German in the mid 16th century by
Leonhard Fronsperger and Conrad Haas, and by the early 17th century into English.[1] Artis
Magnae Artilleriae pars prima, an important early modern work on rocket artillery, by
Kazimierz Siemienowicz, was first printed in Amsterdam in 1650.

The first iron-cased rockets were developed in the late 18th century in the Kingdom of
Mysore (currently Part of India) by Tipu Sultan[11]. The congreve rocket was
a British military weapon designed and developed by Sir William Congreve in 1804, based
directly on Mysorean rockets.

In 1814, Francis Scott Key wrote the line "rockets' red glare" while held captive on a
British ship that was laying siege to Fort McHenry. The rockets he witnessed were an
invention of William Congreve, who built a compressed-powder rocket encased in metal,
increasing the effective range from 100 to 2,000 yards, first used in the Napoleonic
Wars.[12] The first mathematical treatment of the dynamics of rocket propulsion is due to
William Moore (1813). In 1815, Alexander Dmitrievich Zasyadko constructed rocket-
launching platforms, which allowed rockets to be fired in salvos (6 rockets at a time), and
gun-laying devices.

William Hale in 1844 greatly increased the accuracy of rocket artillery. The Congreve
rocket was further improved by Edward Mounier Boxer in 1865.

Konstantin Tsiolkovsky (1903) first speculated on the possibility of manned spaceflight

with rocket technology. Robert Goddard in 1920 published proposed improvements to
rocket technology in A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes. In 1923, Hermann Oberth
(18941989) published Die Rakete zu den Planetenrumen ("The Rocket into Planetary
Space")
Goddard with a liquid oxygen-gasoline rocket (1926)

Modern rockets originated when Goddard attached a supersonic (de Laval) nozzle to the
combustion chamber of a liquid-propellant rocket. These nozzles turn the hot gas from the
combustion chamber into a cooler, hypersonic, highly directed jet of gas, more than
doubling the thrust and raising the engine efficiency from 2% to 64%. Use of liquid
propellants instead of gunpowder greatly improved the effectiveness of rocket artillery in
World War II, and opened up the possibility of manned spaceflight after 1945.

In 1943, production of the V-2 rocket began in Germany. In parallel with the guided missile
programme, rockets were also used on aircraft, either for assisting horizontal take-off
(RATO), vertical take-off (Bachem Ba 349 "Natter") or for powering them (Me 163, see
list of World War II guided missiles of Germany). The Allies' rocket programs were less
sophisticated, relying mostly on unguided missiles like the Soviet Katyusha rocket. The
Americans captured a large number of German rocket scientists, including Wernher von
Braun, and brought them to the United States as part of Operation Paperclip. After the war,
rockets were used to study high-altitude conditions, by radio telemetry of temperature and
pressure of the atmosphere, detection of cosmic rays, and further research; notably the Bell
X-1, the first manned vehicle to break the sound barrier. Independently, in the Soviet
Union's space program research continued under the leadership of the chief designer Sergei
Korolev.

During the Cold War, rockets became extremely important militarily as modern
intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). The 1960s became the decade of rapid
development of rocket technology particularly in the Soviet Union (Vostok, Soyuz, Proton)
and in the United States (e.g. the X-15). Rockets were now used for space exploration, with
the American manned programs Project Mercury, Project Gemini and later the Apollo
programme culminated in 1969 with the first manned landing on the moon via the Saturn
V.