Liquid-Fuel Rockets – Past, Present, Future

A rocket is essentially a chamber, from one end of which gases are expelled at a great speed, thereby driving the chamber in the opposite direction by the recoil, (Golden 47). Rockets are able to go forward through space because of Newton’s “Third Law of Motion”: For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.”

Rockets have been around for a long time. Ever since the ancient Chinese invented gunpowder, man has been experimenting with rockets. They used them as weapons in war and as fireworks (Bryan 349). Then in 1903, Konstatin Tsiolkovsky, a Russian schoolteacher, did some studies on theoretical space travel, and showed why rockets would be necessary for space travel. He concluded that because a rocket is a reaction-propelled device that carries both its own supply of fuel and the oxygen that is necessary to support combustion in space, where no oxygen is available. This conclusion showed that a rocket is the only vehicle currently capab

The next project at NASA was the Apollo project, a three-man mission to the moon. To reach the moon, the U.S. needed to build the biggest rocket ever. It was called the Saturn I. and it was the first rocket designed solely for space exploration.

At about this time, NASA scientists started to search for a substitute for liquid oxygen propellants. This research was influenced by the accident related to liquid-fueled rockets before that date. The result of the research was another class of liquid fuels known as the hypergols. They consisted of nitric acid as the oxidizer and either aniline or a hydrazine as the fuel. A hypergolic propellant does not require an ignition, because the fuel and the oxidizer ignite spontaneously when brought together. We still use this technology today in some rockets (Microsoft Encarta, Encyclopedia).

For the future space missions, engineers hope to design a spacecraft with an engine that can use an airplane runway to take off and land horizontally. In addition, it would be able to achieve the Mach 25 speed that is required to break free of Earth’s gravity and reach a stable orbit around Earth (Flaherty 29). This type of rocket that they have envisioned is called a single stage to orbit rocket (SSTO) rocket and will have the capability to take off from Earth, achieve Earth’s orbit, and then return to land with the same vehicle. The SSTO’s capabilities when it is built, will truly be a large breakthrough in rocket technology (McDonnell Douglas, Internet). One type of SSTO rocket that is currently being designed is called the X-33. This rocket has a very different engine design and is planned to be launch within the next year. Instead of the usual bell-shaped chamber where the flames shoot out, this rocket will have “Aerospikes” which will cause the flames to appear to split !

After the Apollo program, the next project that was worked on was the development of the space shuttle. It was designed to be a reusable spacecraft that is powered by three liquid-propelled engines located at its base. This shuttle also included two orbital maneuvering system rockets that place the shuttle in orbit and later bring it back to Earth. The orbiters’ main rocket engines are said to be the most complex rockets built to this day (Baird 35).

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