Eli5 what the heck is solid rocket fuel

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Edit thanks everyone, I’m not sure why I wasn’t understanding but you’ve all clarified it for me

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u/DarkAlman gave a pretty solid answer.

I’ll add that there are hybrid motors where you have a solid fuel and liquid oxidizer.

Solid rocket motors once started can’t be “turned off”. The entirety of the propellant will burn. It’s great if what you want to do is shoot an explosive warhead at a moving object, not having to worry about fueling the missile and being able to leave it on shelves for years. Just fire the missile and it’ll either hit the target or miss and drop once it runs out of fuel. No need to worry about leaks, etc. Great for Hydra missiles and the like.

They’re not as great if you want to be able to turn off your motor or slow down combustion. Hybrid motors let you do that with some amount of solid fuel. You can just cut throttle the supply of oxidizer. Some universities have rocket competitions and usually use hybrid motors for that.

ETA: A solid motor usually burns from the inner diameter to the outer diameter radially rather than axially like a firework fuse would. To get meaningful thrust, you need lots of gas from the combustion. For that you need surface area. End burners (burns like a fuse) can be a thing, but gases get generated a lot slower.

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