Rocket
- For the rocket lettuce, see arugula; for the early steam locomotive, see Stephenson's Rocket
A rocket is a vehicle, missile or aircraft which obtains thrust by the reaction to the ejection of a fast moving exhaust from within a rocket engine. The exhaust is formed from one or more propellents which are carried within the rocket prior to their release. The thrust is due to Newton's 3rd Law of Motion. Often the term rocket is also used to mean a rocket engine.
In the military terminology, a rocket is generally solid-fueled and unguided. These rockets can be fired by ground-attack aircraft at fixed targets such as buildings, or can be launched by ground forces at other ground targets. During the Vietnam era, there were also air launched unguided rockets that carried a nuclear payload designed to attack aircraft formations in flight.
A missile, by contrast, can be either solid or liquid-fueled, and has a guidance system.
Rockets range in size from tiny models that can be purchased at a hobby store, to the enormous Saturn V used for the Apollo program.
Rockets must be used when there is no other substance (land, water, or air) that a vehicle may push itself with and so it is necessary to carry all the fuel a vehicle needs (such as in outer space). There are many different types of rockets, and a comprehensive list can be found in spacecraft propulsion.
Most current rockets are chemical rockets. A chemical rocket engine may use solid fuel, such as the Space Shuttle's SRBs, or liquid fuel, like the Space Shuttle's main engines. A chemical reaction is initiated with the fuel in the combustion chamber, and the resultant hot gases accelerate out of a nozzle (or nozzles) at the rearward facing end of the rocket. The pressure of the gases pressing on the interior of the combustion chamber and the nozzle(s) generates the thrust that propels the rocket forward.
Another class of rockets in increasingly common use are ion thrusters, which use electrical rather than chemical energy to accelerate their reaction mass. Nuclear thermal rockets have also been developed, but never put into use.
Historically, rockets were first developed by the Chinese as early as B.C. 300, using gunpowder. These were initially developed for entertainment, the precursors to modern fireworks, but were later adapted for warfare in the 11th century. Because the pressures on the rocket walls are lower, the use of rockets in warfare preceded the use of the gun, which required a higher level of metal technology. It was in this role that rockets first became known to Europeans following their use by Ottomans at the siege of Constantinople in 1453. For several more centuries they remained curiosities to those in the West.
At the end of the 18th century, rockets were used militarily in India against the British, who then took up the practice and developed them further during the 19th century. The major figure in the field at this time was William Congreve. From there, the use of military rockets spread throughout Europe. The rockets' red glare helped to inspire the US national anthem.
These rockets were remarkably inefficient however. Modern rockets were born when Robert Goddard attached a de Laval nozzle to a rocket engine's combustion chamber, doubling the thrust and enormously raising the efficiency, giving the real possibility of practical space travel.
This technique was soon used on the V2 Rockets, designed by Wernher Von Braun who became one of the principal players in modern rocket development. V2s were deployed extensively by Adolf Hitler in the latter stages of World War II as terror weapons against the British population, each successful launch reaching high up into the vacuum of space and augering the beginning of The Space Age.