How do rockets fly? How a rocket takes off: astronautics in simple words How and why does a rocket take off.

A rocket is a means of transportation for a person in the air, in the atmosphere. Airplanes and other aircraft also serve to fly. But they are from...

A rocket is a means of transportation for a person in the air, in the atmosphere.. Airplanes and other aircraft also serve to fly. But they are different from each other. The rocket takes off, planes and vehicles fly. But the laws of flight are different. A rocket is more like a large projectile fired into the air. The rocket is designed to fly into space. And it takes off due to jet thrust.

How does a rocket move? Due to jet thrust.
Can she fly not only in the air? Maybe. She can fly even in a vacuum. There is no air in space, but the rocket still flies. And even better than in the air.

The rocket flight system works according to Newton's law. The gases in the engine are accelerated, creating thrust which creates force. With the help of this force, the rocket moves. In order to move, you need to start from something. When a car drives or a person walks, they push off earth's surface and fall on it again. It turns out the movement forward, because the traction force of the Earth acts. The rocket rises into space, but does not fall back. With the help of reactive gases, it is repelled from the Earth, but does not return back, overcoming the force of thrust. Approximately the same water bodies: submarine, squid, shark swims.

Fuel, in order for the rocket to take off, use a variety of things. It can be liquid and solid. By burning fuel, the rocket rises into the air. After the fuel combustion chamber are nozzles. Burnt gas erupts from them, which lifts the rocket into space. A rocket going up can be compared to an erupting volcano. When it flies into the air, you can observe large clouds of smoke, the smell of burning, fire. Just like a volcano or a big bang.

The rocket consists of several stages. In the course of her flight, these steps are separated. In space itself, already much easier, a spaceship is flying, which has thrown out all the extra cargo, what was a rocket.

Staging example

It should be noted that the plane cannot fly into space. Balloon too. Of all known means air travel rocket is the only one that rises into space and can fly beyond the planet Earth.

It is interesting: the rocket is not the most famous aircraft to date. It is known that vimanas once flew in space. The principle of flight resembles the flight of today's rocket. The upper part of the rocket resembles a vimana, but it has a slightly different shape.

How and why does a rocket take off

In order to see how the rocket takes off, you need to watch special television reports or find relevant videos on the Internet. Only individuals involved in this process, while they must be located on the territory of the cosmodrome.

How is the takeoff

Start spacecraft cannot by itself, for this it needs to receive a command from the control point. The rocket is in a vertical position at the spaceport, then the engines begin to emit a powerful sound. First, a bright flame of impressive size appears below, a growing rumble is heard. Then this rocket flies up: first at a relatively low speed, then faster. With every second it moves away from the Earth further and further, the sound becomes stronger.

Pretty soon, the spacecraft is at an altitude that both civilians and combat aircraft. At such a height, only vehicles designed to operate in the expanses of the Universe, which are outside the boundaries of the atmospheres of celestial bodies, fly. Literally a minute later, the take-off apparatus finds itself in space, that is, in airless space. Then he continues his way, depending on the route that was planned on Earth. This device, as before, is controlled from the command post.

jet engines

The sound that a rocket makes when taking off indicates that it is equipped with jet engines. The motors are driven by the force that results from the appearance of a powerful jet of hot gases. These gases are formed in a special chamber when the fuel burns. It may seem incredible that they have the ability to easily display space orbit a rocket weighing several tons, while the characteristic sound is heard at a sufficiently large distance from the launch site.

However, it should be borne in mind that the air contained in the chambers of bicycles or cars successfully withstands the weight of both people driving two-wheeled vehicles. vehicles, and drivers of cars, as well as their passengers and cargo. Therefore, there is nothing surprising in the fact that an overly hot gas, escaping from a rocket nozzle with great force, is able to push it up at high speed. Practically after each launch of a rocket, the platform for its launch, built using especially durable materials, needs to be repaired, because rockets should not take off from a damaged surface.

Newton's third law

We are talking about the law, which means the law of conservation of momentum. Initially, a rocket, immobile on the launch pad before launch, has zero momentum. After the engines are turned on, the sound grows, during the combustion of the fuel, gaseous products are formed high temperature, which are on high speed come out of the nozzle aircraft. This results in the creation of a momentum vector that points downwards.

However, there is a law of conservation of momentum, according to which the total momentum acquired by the take-off vehicle relative to the launch pad must still be equal to zero. Here, another momentum vector arises, the action of which is aimed at balancing the product with respect to the outgoing gases. It appears due to the fact that the spacecraft, which was stationary, starts moving. The upward momentum is equal to the weight of the product times its speed.

If the rocket engines are powerful enough, it picks up speed quickly. This speed is enough to put the spacecraft into Earth orbit for a fairly short time. The take-off vehicle has a power that directly depends on the fuel filled into it. AT Soviet period rocket engines ran on aviation kerosene. Currently, a more complex chemical mixture is used, which, when burned, releases great amount energy.

Rockets rise into outer space by burning liquid or solid propellants. Once ignited in high-strength combustion chambers, these fuels, usually composed of a combustible and an oxidizer, release enormous amounts of heat, creating a very high pressure, under the action of which the products of combustion move towards the earth's surface through expanding nozzles.

Since the products of combustion flow down from the nozzles, the rocket rises up. This phenomenon is explained by Newton's third law, according to which for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Since liquid propellant engines are easier to control than solid propellant engines, they are commonly used in space rockets, in particular in the Saturn V rocket shown in the figure on the left. This three-stage rocket burns thousands of tons of liquid hydrogen and oxygen to propel the spacecraft into orbit.

In order to rise quickly, the thrust of a rocket must exceed its weight by about 30 percent. At the same time, if the spacecraft is to go into near-Earth orbit, it must develop a speed of about 8 kilometers per second. The thrust of rockets can reach up to several thousand tons.

1. Five engines of the first stage raise the rocket to a height of 50-80 kilometers. After the first stage fuel is used up, it will separate and the second stage engines will turn on.
2. Approximately 12 minutes after launch, the second stage delivers the rocket to an altitude of more than 160 kilometers, after which it separates with empty tanks. An emergency escape rocket also separates.
3. Accelerated by a single third-stage engine, the rocket puts the Apollo spacecraft into a temporary near-Earth orbit, about 320 kilometers high. After a short break, the engines turn on again, increasing the speed of the spacecraft to about 11 kilometers per second and pointing it towards the moon.

The F-1 engine of the first stage burns the fuel and releases the combustion products into the environment.

After launching into orbit, the Apollo spacecraft receives an accelerating impulse towards the Moon. Then the third stage separates and the spacecraft, consisting of the command and lunar modules, enters a 100-kilometer orbit around the moon, after which the lunar module lands. Having delivered the astronauts who have been on the Moon to the command module, the lunar module separates and ceases to function.

And we know that in order for movement to occur, the action of a certain force is necessary. The body must either push itself away from something, or a third-party body must push the given one. This is well known and understandable to us from life experience.

What to push off in space?

At the surface of the Earth, you can push off from the surface or from objects located on it. For movement on the surface, legs, wheels, caterpillars, and so on are used. In water and air, one can repel oneself from the water and air themselves, which have a certain density, and therefore allow one to interact with them. Nature has adapted fins and wings for this.

Man has created engines based on propellers, which many times increase the area of ​​contact with the environment due to rotation and allow you to push off water and air. But what about in the case of airless space? What to push off in space? There is no air, there is nothing. How to fly in space? This is where the law of conservation of momentum and the principle of jet propulsion come to the rescue. Let's take a closer look.

Momentum and the principle of jet propulsion

Momentum is the product of a body's mass and its speed. When a body is stationary, its speed is zero. However, the body has some mass. In the absence of outside influences, if part of the mass is separated from the body at a certain speed, then, according to the law of conservation of momentum, the rest of the body must also acquire some speed so that the total momentum remains equal to zero.

Moreover, the speed of the remaining main part of the body will depend on the speed with which the smaller part will separate. The higher this speed is, the higher will be the speed of the main body. This is understandable if we recall the behavior of bodies on ice or in water.

If two people are nearby, and then one of them pushes the other, then he will not only give that acceleration, but he himself will fly back. And the more he pushes someone, the faster he will fly off himself.

You must have been to similar situation and you can imagine how it goes. So here it is This is what jet propulsion is based on..

Rockets that implement this principle eject some of their mass onto high speed, as a result of which they themselves acquire some acceleration in the opposite direction.

The streams of hot gases resulting from the combustion of fuel are ejected through narrow nozzles to give them the highest possible speed. At the same time, the mass of the rocket decreases by the amount of the mass of these gases, and it acquires a certain speed. Thus, the principle of jet propulsion in physics is realized.

The principle of rocket flight

Rockets use a multi-stage system. During flight, the lower stage, having used up its entire supply of fuel, separates from the rocket in order to reduce its total mass and facilitate flight.

The number of stages decreases until the working part remains in the form of a satellite or other spacecraft. The fuel is calculated in such a way that it is enough just to go into orbit.

What space rocket? How is it organized? How does it fly? Why do people travel in space on rockets?

It would seem that we have known all this for a long time and well. But just in case, let's check ourselves. Let's repeat the alphabet.

Our planet Earth is covered with a layer of air - the atmosphere. At the surface of the Earth, the air is quite dense, thick. Above - thins. At an altitude of hundreds of kilometers, it imperceptibly "fades away", passes into airless outer space.

Compared to the air we live in, it is empty. But, speaking strictly scientifically, the emptiness is not complete. All this space is permeated with the rays of the Sun and stars, fragments of atoms flying from them. Cosmic dust particles float in it. You can meet a meteorite. Traces of their atmospheres are felt in the vicinity of many celestial bodies. Therefore, airless outer space we cannot call emptiness. We'll just call it space.

The same law applies both on Earth and in space. gravity. According to this law, all objects attract each other. The attraction of the huge globe is very palpable.

In order to break away from the Earth and fly into space, you must first of all somehow overcome its attraction.

The plane overcomes it only partially. Taking off, it rests its wings on the air. And it cannot rise to where the air is very rarefied. Especially in space, where there is no air at all.

You cannot climb a tree higher than the tree itself.

What to do? How to "climb" into space? What to rely on where there is nothing?

Let's pretend we're giants huge growth. We are standing on the surface of the Earth, and the atmosphere is waist-deep. We have a ball in our hands. We release it from our hands - it flies down to the Earth. Falls at our feet.

Now we throw the ball parallel to the surface of the Earth. In obedience to us, the ball should fly above the atmosphere, forward where we threw it. But the Earth did not stop pulling him towards her. And, obeying her, he, like the first time, must fly down. The ball is forced to obey both. And therefore it flies somewhere in the middle between two directions, between "forward" and "down". The path of the ball, its trajectory, is obtained in the form of a curved line bending towards the Earth. The ball goes down, plunges into the atmosphere and falls to the Earth. But no longer at our feet, but somewhere at a distance.

Let's throw the ball harder. He will fly faster. Under the influence of the Earth's gravity, it will again begin to turn towards it. But now - more gently.

Let's throw the ball even harder. It flew so fast, it began to turn so gently that it no longer “has time” to fall to the Earth. Its surface "rounds" under it, as if it leaves from under it. The trajectory of the ball, although it bends towards the Earth, is not steep enough. And it turns out that, while continuously falling towards the Earth, the ball nevertheless flies around the globe. Its trajectory closed into a ring, became an orbit. And the ball will now fly over it all the time. Not ceasing to fall to the ground. But not approaching her, not hitting her.

In order to put the ball into a circular orbit like this, you need to throw it at a speed of 8 kilometers per second! This speed is called circular, or first cosmic.

It is curious that this speed in flight will be preserved by itself. The flight slows down when something interferes with the flight. And the ball is not in the way. It flies above the atmosphere, in space!

How can you fly "by inertia" without stopping? It's hard to understand because we've never lived in space. We are accustomed to the fact that we are always surrounded by air. We know that a ball of cotton, no matter how hard you throw it, will not fly far, it will get bogged down in the air, stop, and fall to the Earth. In space, all objects fly without resistance. At a speed of 8 kilometers per second, unfolded sheets of newspaper, cast-iron weights, tiny cardboard toy rockets and real steel rockets can fly nearby. spaceships. Everyone will fly side by side, not lagging behind and not overtaking each other. They will circle around the earth in the same way.

But back to the ball. Let's throw it even harder. For example, at a speed of 10 kilometers per second. What will become of him?

Rocket orbits at different initial velocities.

At this speed, the trajectory will straighten even more. The ball will start moving away from the ground. Then it will slow down, smoothly turn back to the Earth. And, approaching it, it will accelerate just to the speed with which we sent it flying, up to ten kilometers per second. At this speed, he will rush past us and carry on. Everything will be repeated from the beginning. Again rise with deceleration, turn, fall with acceleration. This ball will also never fall to the ground. He also went into orbit. But not circular, but elliptical.

A ball thrown at a speed of 11.1 kilometers per second will "reach" the Moon itself and only then turn back. And at a speed of 11.2 kilometers per second, it will not return to Earth at all, it will leave to wander around the solar system. The speed of 11.2 kilometers per second is called the second cosmic.

So, you can stay in space only with the help of high speed.

How to accelerate at least to the first cosmic speed, up to eight kilometers per second?

The speed of a car on a good highway does not exceed 40 meters per second. The speed of the TU-104 aircraft is not more than 250 meters per second. And we need to move at a speed of 8000 meters per second! Fly thirty plus times faster than an airplane! Rushing at that speed in the air is generally impossible. Air "does not let". It becomes an impenetrable wall in our path.

That is why we then, imagining ourselves as giants, "poked out to the waist" from the atmosphere into space. The air disturbed us.

But miracles don't happen. There are no giants. But you still need to "get out". How to be? To build a tower hundreds of kilometers high is ridiculous even to think. It is necessary to find a way to slowly, "slowly", pass through the thick air into space. And only where nothing interferes, “on a good road” to accelerate to the desired speed.

In a word, in order to stay in space, you need to accelerate. And in order to accelerate, you must first get to space and stay there.

To hold on - accelerate! To accelerate - hold on!

The way out of this vicious circle was prompted to people by our remarkable Russian scientist Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky. Only a rocket is suitable for going into space and accelerating in it. It is about her that our conversation will go on.

The rocket has no wings or propellers. She can not rely on anything in flight. She doesn't need to push anything to get going. It can move both in air and in space. Slower in air, faster in space. She moves in a reactive way. What does it mean? Let's bring an old, but very good example.

The shore of a quiet lake. There is a boat two meters from the shore. The nose is directed to the lake. A boy is standing at the stern of the boat, he wants to jump ashore. He sat down, pulled himself up, jumped with all his strength ... and safely "landed" on the shore. And the boat ... started off and quietly swam away from the shore.

What happened? When the boy jumped, his legs worked like a spring, which was compressed and then straightened. This "spring" at one end pushed the man to the shore. Others - a boat in the lake. The boat and the man pushed off each other. The boat floated, as they say, thanks to the recoil, or reaction. This is the jet mode of movement.

Scheme of a multi-stage rocket.

The return is well known to us. Consider, for example, how a cannon fires. When fired, the projectile flies forward from the barrel, and the gun itself rolls back sharply. Why? Yes, all because of the same. Gunpowder inside the gun barrel, burning, turns into hot gases. In an effort to escape, they put pressure on all the walls from the inside, ready to tear the barrel of the gun to pieces. They push out artillery shell and, expanding, they also work like a spring - they “throw in different directions” a cannon and a projectile. Only the projectile is lighter, and it can be thrown back for many kilometers. The gun is heavier, and it can only be rolled back a little.

Let us now take the usual small powder rocket, which has been used for hundreds of years for fireworks. It is a cardboard tube closed on one side. Inside is gunpowder. If it is set on fire, it burns, turning into red-hot gases. Breaking through open end tubes, they throw themselves back, and the rocket forward. And they push her so hard that she flies to the sky.

Powder rockets have been around for a long time. But for large, space rockets, gunpowder, it turns out, is not always convenient. First of all, gunpowder is not the strongest explosive at all. Alcohol or kerosene, for example, if finely sprayed and mixed with droplets of liquid oxygen, explode stronger than gunpowder. Such liquids have common name- fuel. And liquid oxygen or liquids replacing it, containing a lot of oxygen, are called an oxidizing agent. The fuel and oxidizer together form rocket fuel.

A modern liquid propellant rocket engine, or LRE for short, is a very strong, steel, bottle-like combustion chamber. Its neck with a bell is a nozzle. Into the cell through the tubes in in large numbers fuel and oxidizer are continuously injected. Violent combustion occurs. The flame is raging. Hot gases with incredible force and a loud roar break out through the nozzle. Breaking out, push the camera in reverse side. The camera is attached to the rocket, and it turns out that the gases are pushing the rocket. The jet of gases is directed backward, and therefore the rocket flies forward.

A modern big rocket looks like this. Below, in its tail, there are engines, one or more. Nearly everything above free place occupy fuel tanks. At the top, in the head of the rocket, they place what it flies for. That she must "deliver to the address." In space rockets, this can be some kind of satellite that needs to be put into orbit, or a spaceship with astronauts.

The rocket itself is called a launch vehicle. And a satellite or a ship is a payload.

So, we seem to have found a way out of the vicious circle. We have a rocket with a liquid rocket engine. Moving in a jet way, it can “quietly” pass through a dense atmosphere, go out into space and accelerate there to the desired speed.

The first difficulty that rocket scientists faced was the lack of fuel. Rocket engines are purposely made very "gluttonous" so that they burn fuel faster, produce and throw back as many gases as possible. But ... the rocket will not have time to gain even half of the required speed, as the fuel in the tanks will run out. And this is despite the fact that we literally filled the entire interior of the rocket with fuel. Make the rocket bigger to fit more fuel? Will not help. A larger, heavier rocket will take more fuel to accelerate, and there will be no benefit.

Tsiolkovsky also suggested a way out of this unpleasant situation. He advised making rockets multi-stage.

We take several rockets of different sizes. They are called steps - the first, second, third. We put one on top of the other. Below is the biggest one. It's less for her. Above - the smallest, with a payload in the head. This is a three-stage rocket. But there may be more steps.

During takeoff, acceleration begins the first, most powerful stage. Having used up its fuel, it separates and falls back to Earth. The rocket gets rid of excess weight. The second stage begins to work, continuing acceleration. Its engines are smaller, lighter, and they consume fuel more economically. Having worked, the second stage also separates, passing the baton to the third. That one is quite easy. She finishes her run.

All space rockets are multistage.

The next question is what is the best way for a rocket to go into space? Maybe, like an airplane, take off along a concrete path, take off from the Earth and, gradually gaining altitude, rise into an airless space?

It is not profitable. It will take too long to fly in the air. The path through the dense layers of the atmosphere should be as short as possible. Therefore, as you probably noticed, all space rockets, wherever they then fly, always take off straight up. And only in rarefied air they gradually turn in the right direction. Such a takeoff in terms of fuel consumption is the most economical.

Multi-stage rockets launch a payload into orbit. But at what cost? Judge for yourself. To put one ton into Earth orbit, you need to burn several tens of tons of fuel! For a load of 10 tons - hundreds of tons. The American Saturn-5 rocket, which puts 130 tons into earth orbit, weighs 3,000 tons by itself!

And perhaps the most disappointing thing is that we still do not know how to return launch vehicles to Earth. Having done their job, dispersing the payload, they separate and ... fall. Crash on the ground or drown in the ocean. The second time we can't use them.

Imagine that a passenger plane was built for only one flight. Incredible! But rockets, which cost more than planes, are built for only one flight. Therefore, the launch of each satellite or spacecraft into orbit is very expensive.

But we digress.

Far from always, our task is only to put the payload into a circular near-Earth orbit. Much more often put more difficult task. For example, to deliver a payload to the moon. And sometimes bring it back from there. In this case, after entering a circular orbit, the rocket must perform many more different “manoeuvres”. And they all require fuel consumption.

Now let's talk about these maneuvers.

The plane flies nose first because it needs to cut through the air with its sharp nose. And the rocket, after it has entered the airless space, has nothing to cut. There is nothing in her path. And because the rocket in space after turning off the engine can fly in any position - and stern forward, and tumbling. If during such a flight the engine is turned on again briefly, it will push the rocket. And here it all depends on where the nose of the rocket is aimed. If forward - the engine will push the rocket, and it will fly faster. If you go back, the engine will hold it, slow it down, and it will fly more slowly. If the rocket looked to the side with its nose, the engine will push it to the side, and it will change the direction of its flight without changing its speed.

The same engine can do anything with a rocket. Accelerate, brake, turn. It all depends on how we aim or orient the rocket before turning on the engine.

On the rocket, somewhere in the tail, there are small jet engines orientation. They are directed by nozzles in different directions. By turning them on and off, you can push the tail of the rocket up and down, left and right, and thus turn the rocket. Orient it with your nose in any direction.

Imagine that we need to fly to the moon and return. What maneuvers will be required for this?

First of all, we enter a circular orbit around the Earth. Here you can rest by turning off the engine. Without spending a single gram of precious fuel, the rocket will "silently" walk around the Earth until we decide to fly further.

To get to the Moon, it is necessary to move from a circular orbit to a highly elongated elliptical one.

We orient the rocket nose forward and turn on the engine. He starts pushing us. As soon as the speed slightly exceeds 11 kilometers per second, turn off the engine. The rocket went into a new orbit.

I must say that it is very difficult to “hit the target” in space. If the Earth and the Moon were stationary, and it would be possible to fly in space in straight lines, the matter would be simple. Aim - and fly, keeping the target all the time “on course”, as captains do sea ​​ships and pilots. And speed doesn't matter. You arrive sooner or later, what difference does it make. All the same, the goal, the "port of destination", will not go anywhere.

It's not like that in space. Getting from the Earth to the Moon is about the same as, while spinning rapidly on a carousel, hitting a flying bird with a ball. Judge for yourself. The earth we take off from is spinning. The moon - our "port of destination" - also does not stand still, flies around the Earth, flying a kilometer every second. In addition, our rocket does not fly in a straight line, but in an elliptical orbit, gradually slowing down its movement. Its speed only at the beginning was more than eleven kilometers per second, and then, due to the gravity of the Earth, it began to decrease. And you have to fly for a long time, several days. And while there are no landmarks around. There is no road. There is not and cannot be any map, because there would be nothing to put on the map - there is nothing around. One black. Only far, far away stars. They are above us and below us, from all sides. And we must calculate the direction of our flight and its speed in such a way that at the end of the path we arrive at the intended place in space simultaneously with the Moon. If we make a mistake in speed - we will be late for the "date", the Moon will not wait for us.

In order to reach the goal despite all these difficulties, the most complex instruments are installed on the Earth and on the rocket. Electronic computers work on Earth, hundreds of observers, calculators, scientists and engineers work.

And, despite all this, we still check once or twice on the way whether we are flying correctly. If we deviated a little, we carry out, as they say, a correction of the trajectory. To do this, we orient the rocket with its nose in the right direction, turn on the engine for a few seconds. He will push the rocket a little, correct its flight. And then it flies as it should.

Getting to the moon is also difficult. First, we must fly as if we intend to "miss" past the moon. Secondly, fly astern. As soon as the rocket caught up with the Moon, we turn on the engine for a short while. He slows us down. Under the influence of the moon's gravity, we turn in its direction and begin to walk around it in a circular orbit. Here you can take a break again. Then we start landing. Again, we orient the rocket “stern forward” and once again briefly turn on the engine. The speed decreases and we start falling towards the moon. Not far from the surface of the moon, we turn on the engine again. He begins to hold back our fall. It is necessary to calculate in such a way that the engine completely extinguishes the speed and stops us just before landing. Then we will gently, without impact, descend on the moon.

The return from the Moon is already proceeding in familiar order. First, we take off into a circular, circumlunar orbit. Then we increase the speed and switch to an elongated elliptical orbit, along which we go to the Earth. But landing on Earth is not the same as landing on the moon. The earth is surrounded by an atmosphere, and air resistance can be used for braking.

However, it is impossible to plumb into the atmosphere. From too sharp braking, the rocket will flare up, burn out, fall apart into pieces. Therefore, we aim it so that it enters the atmosphere "at random". In this case, it plunges into the dense layers of the atmosphere not so quickly. Our speed is slowly decreasing. At an altitude of several kilometers, a parachute opens - and we are at home. That's how many maneuvers a flight to the moon requires.

To save fuel, designers also use multistage here. For example, our rockets, which gently landed on the moon and then brought samples of lunar soil from there, had five stages. Three - for takeoff from the Earth and flight to the Moon. The fourth is for landing on the moon. And the fifth - to return to Earth.

Everything we have said so far has been theory, so to speak. Now let's make a mental excursion to the cosmodrome. Let's see how it all looks in practice.

Build missiles in factories. Wherever possible, the lightest and strongest materials are used. To lighten the rocket, they try to make all its mechanisms and all the equipment standing on it as "portable" as possible. It will be easier to get a rocket - you can take more fuel with you, increase the payload.

The rocket is brought to the spaceport in parts. It is assembled in a large assembly and test building. Then a special crane - an installer - in a lying position carries a rocket, empty, without fuel, to the launch pad. There he picks her up and puts her in a vertical position. From all sides, four supports of the launch system are wrapped around the rocket so that it does not fall from gusts of wind. Then service farms with balconies are brought to it so that the technicians preparing the rocket for launch can get close to any of its places. A refueling mast with hoses through which fuel is poured into the rocket, and a cable-mast with electric cables are brought in to check all the mechanisms and instruments of the rocket before the flight.

Space rockets are huge. Our very first space rocket "Vostok" and even then had a height of 38 meters, with a ten-story building. And the largest American six-stage Saturn-5 rocket, which delivered American astronauts to the moon, had a height of more than a hundred meters. Its diameter at the base is 10 meters.

When everything is checked and the filling of fuel is completed, the service trusses, the fueling mast and the cable mast are retracted.

And here is the start! On a signal from the command post, automation begins to work. It supplies fuel to the combustion chambers. Turns on the ignition. The fuel ignites. The engines begin to quickly gain power, putting more and more pressure on the rocket from below. When at last they gain full power and raise the rocket, the supports recline, release the rocket, and with a deafening roar, as if on a pillar of fire, it goes into the sky.

The flight control of the rocket is carried out partly automatically, partly by radio from the Earth. And if the rocket carries a spaceship with astronauts, then they themselves can control it.

To communicate with the rocket around the globe radio stations are located. After all, the rocket goes around the planet, and it may be necessary to contact it just when it is "on the other side of the Earth."

Rocket technology, despite its youth, shows us the wonders of perfection. Rockets flew to the moon and returned back. They flew hundreds of millions of kilometers to Venus and Mars, making soft landings there. Manned spacecraft performed the most complex maneuvers in space. Hundreds of various satellites have been launched into space by rockets.

There are many difficulties on the paths leading to space.

For a man to travel, say, to Mars, we would need a rocket of absolutely incredible, monstrous dimensions. More grandiose ocean ships weighing tens of thousands of tons! There is nothing to think about building such a rocket.

For the first time, when flying to the nearest planets, docking in space can help. Huge "long-range" spaceships can be built collapsible, from separate links. With the help of relatively small rockets, put these links into the same "assembly" orbit near the Earth and dock there. So it is possible to assemble a ship in space, which will be even larger than the rockets that lifted it piece by piece into space. It is technically possible even today.

However, docking does not facilitate the conquest of space by much. Much more will give the development of new rocket engines. Also reactive, but less voracious than the current liquid ones. Visiting the planets of our solar system will move forward dramatically after the development of electric and atomic engines. However, there will come a time when flights to other stars, to other solar systems And then you need again new technology. Perhaps by then, scientists and engineers will be able to build photonic rockets. "Fire jet" they will have an incredibly powerful beam of light. With a negligible consumption of matter, such rockets can accelerate to speeds of hundreds of thousands of kilometers per second!

Space technology will never stop developing. A person will set himself more and more goals. To achieve them - to come up with more and more advanced missiles. And having created them - to set even more majestic goals!

Many of you guys will surely dedicate themselves to conquering space. Good luck on this exciting journey!

To break out of the earth's atmosphere, rockets require a huge amount of energy. When propellant burns, a stream of hot gases is formed, escaping outward through a jet nozzle. The result is a force that pushes the rocket forward—much like air escaping from balloon, makes it fly in the opposite direction.

The Space Shuttle uses two rockets to enter Earth orbit at once. Once the ship is in space, the boosters and main fuel tank are detached and fall back to Earth.
The Shuttle launches satellites into orbit, conducts various scientific experiments. On the way back, it glides and lands like a regular plane.

1. The fuel tanks contain about two million liters (about half a million gallons) of propellant.
2. Parachutes slow down the rate at which rocket boosters fall to Earth after they have been detached.
3. The crew of the "Shuttle" can consist of seven people.
4. rocket booster
5. cargo compartment
6. Satellite
7. Chassis

What is a satellite?

A satellite is any body that orbits a planet. The Moon is a satellite of the Earth In the same way, a spacecraft that enters its orbit becomes a satellite of the Earth. artificial satellites Lands are used in a wide variety of ways. Weather satellites take pictures of the Earth's cloud cover, which helps scientists predict the weather. Astronomical satellites transmit information about stars and planets to earth Communications satellites relay around the world telephone conversations and television shows.

The image on the left is a satellite photograph of a storm that has just passed the UK and is approaching Scandinavia.

Did you know it?

When astronomers look at the stars, they see many of them as they were thousands or even millions of years ago. Some of these stars may no longer exist. The light of the stars takes so long to reach the Earth because the distance to them is incredibly great.