how do rockets engine work?
In: Technology
All rockets work by pushing something really really fast out the back.
When you push something, that something pushes you back just as hard.
Or as Newton said “for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction”
Almost all the rockets we made use chemicals. They burned making the burnt bits get really hot (IE move really fast) and directed the explosion out the back. They then had a nozzle to make sure the explosion went out the back, rather than to the sides.
The specifics are really variable. Sometimes it was a long tube with solid burny bits on the insides. Other times they used a pump to move liquid burny stuff to a place to be burned.
Usually it’s a burny thing and a separate air replacement that are brought together to burn. But sometimes they were stored mixed the two together in a way that it wouldn’t immediately explode.
More recently they started using a lot of electricity to use magnets to make a xenon ion go absurdly fast. Called an ion engine.
There was talks and working models of using a nuclear reactor to make liquid hydrogen really really hot, then pushing it out the back instead of into a turbine. But that was expensive and too many people were scared of nuclear stuff.
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