Interactive Rocketry Tutorial

ROCKET ENGINES

Rocket engines propel a spacecraft not only up through the Earth’s atmosphere, but also through space itself. This means that they are very powerful. They are so powerful, they have allowed us to send astronauts to the Moon, as well as to space stations orbiting the Earth.

A rocket engine generates a force by ejecting some of its mass out of the back of it, at high speed. It does this by causing 2 different chemicals to explode. As the rocket goes higher and faster, it uses up its chemicals to keep the explosion going, this makes the rocket lighter and lighter, which in turn allows it to travel faster. This is how the Space Shuttle, and many other current rockets work.

The explosion continues as the chemicals are mixed. These chemicals explode in a very strong container called a combustion chamber. The explosion turns the chemicals into a gas at very high temperatures and pressures. The gas needs somewhere to escape, so it blasts downwards out of the combustion chamber, and through the rocket nozzle at very high speed. As the gas blasts downwards out of the nozzle, it forces the rocket upwards, pushing it towards space. Newton explained why this works with his “Laws of Motion”.

This page is maintained by Richard Osborne