Basic Info:
A rocket in its simplest form is a chamber enclosing gas under pressure. In order for the rocket to take off, there needs to be an opening at the end of the rocket to allow the gas to escape the rocket and thrust the rocket into the air in the opposite direction. For space rockets, gas is produced by burning propellants that are solid or liquid. Sometimes these propellants are a combination of both. A propellant is the combination of both fuel and oxidizers, in liquid or solid form, which are burned by a rocket to produce thrust. Newton's Laws:
Rockets tie in with Newton's Laws in many ways. Here are Newton's three laws before we get started: 1) An object in motion will stay in motion, an object at rest will stay at rest unless acted upon by an outside force. 2) Force=Mass•Acceleration (F=MA). 3) For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Now, this is the way Newton's Laws tie in with a rocket and its launch. First Law: An unbalanced force must act on the rocket to lift off or to change speed and direction while in space. Second Law: The thrust that the rocket gives off is determined by the mass of rocket fuel that is burned and how fast the gas escapes the rocket. Third Law: The motion of the rocket (reaction) is equal to and in the opposite direction of the thrust (reaction) from the engine.
Rockets and Propellants:
We did not learn about fuel and propellants last semester, but it helps to understand how rockets take off. To start, fuel is the chemical that rockets burn. For fuel to burn, there needs to be an oxidizer. An oxidizer is basically oxygen that the rocket needs because there is no oxygen in space. Solid rocket propellants are dry to the touch. Liquid propellants are often gases that are chilled until they condense into liquids. Liquid propellants have their fuel and oxidizers in seperate containers.
Photo Credit: Bill, Ingals/NASA
Info Credit: MIT Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics (1996) "Rocket Principles" [Web] Retrieved from: http://web.mit.edu/16.00/www/aec/rocket.html; Date accessed: Jan 2015
Wow Ashik this had a great amount of detail and written almost to perfection. In fact I really like rockets I think they are very cool!
ReplyDeleteThe part in the blog about the solid and liquid rocket fuel was very interesting. Did you know that ion propulsion is actually a possibility in space travel I don't know quite exactly how it works but it vents out ions to propel the craft forward through the final frontier. Also NASA has been working on a new space program called Orion, The new rockets, the Ares I and the Ares V will be used to propel the astronauts to space.
ReplyDelete