• Question: how do you launch a rocket?

    Asked by Riley to Hester on 4 Mar 2021.
    • Photo: Hester Baird

      Hester Baird answered on 4 Mar 2021:


      Another great question Riley! Rockets work by burning fuel (such as liquid oxygen and hydrogen) and firing out the exhaust gases from the engine through a nozzle. If you imagine letting go of a balloon filled with air, the air escapes from the balloon and the balloon flies off in the opposite direction. This is the same idea as how a rocket works.
      Rockets need huge amounts of fuel to get into space, which is why they are so big, as a lot of room is needed to store the fuel. The rocket is also split into sections, called ‘stages’. The stages each have engines and take turns to ignite and burn their fuel. Once the fuel in one stage is burnt, the stage separates from the rest of the rocket, so that the rest of the rocket doesn’t have to carry all of the weight from the empty stage. The empty stages often then re-enter and burn up in the Earths atmosphere soon afterwards.
      There are lots of videos online of rocket launches that you can watch – the SpaceX launches are very cool to watch. The exciting thing about the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket is that rather than just dumping the first stage and letting it break up in the atmosphere, the first stage is designed to fly back down to Earth and land, so that it can be re-used!

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