In order to move, you have to apply an equal force to something else, right? So how can rockets move in space where there are no particles?
In: Physics
Imagine shooting a rifle. The bullet being shot forward out of the gun pushes the gun, and you, backwards. The atmosphere around you and the rifle has a negligible impact on the amount of recoil you feel. You could shoot a gun in the vacuum of space and the recoil would be the same. Now imagine you have a machine gun and are sitting on a rolling chair. Firing the machine gun would propel you backwards. Rockets work the same way except instead of riding the recoil from bullets being fired, they are riding the recoil from the exploding hot gases inside the combustion chamber being expelled out the nozzle.
In fact, the atmosphere has a negative effect on a rocket’s performance. The rocket exhaust has to push the atmosphere out of the way on it’s way out of the engine, slowing it down and reducing performance. While we can optimize an engine to lose less performance as sea level, (the space shuttle main engines are a great example of this) at best we can only reduce the performance lost.
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