ELI5, How do rockets go straight up into space?

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Like Jeff Bezo’s… Uhh… Rocket… Don’t rockets need “fins” or “wings” to help stabilize or something?

In: Technology

7 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

If you check on Google images, you’d see his rockets had fins near the bottom to stabilise the rocket and act as control surfaces

If you’re surprised how small they are as compared to aeroplanes, the reason is that the thrust and lift of the rockets are coming from it’s engines pointed downwards (edit: and as another user mentioned, via engine gimballing). These engines are huge and have a lot of fuel to produce a lot of thrust. In aeroplanes, you are space limited so you need engines that provide thrust attached to large wings to generate lift, otherwise aeroplanes would either be huge or have little space for passengers and cargo in their current sizes

As a comparison, look up an image of a missile that is fired from military jets or vehicles – you’d also see that those have small fins for stabilisation and direction control, because the rocket motor is providing the thrust and subsequent lift

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