The Rocket Engines Quiz

The combination is ignitable and controllable.

That law comes in play in every part of a rocket's construction and functionality.

The Redstone was actually a military rocket meant to carry warheads, not people.

Without thrust, rockets can't even begin their missions.

They don't burn, though, until they are exposed to an igniter.

This rocket-powered plane featured some improvements that let it top 1,600 mph in 1954.

These rockets use a solid fuel propellant to create thrust.

The propellant and oxidizer are stored in separate compartments and then combined in a combustion chamber.

The kerosene is refined and is in many ways a lot like jet fuel.

The Chinese developed rockets that used gunpowder as fuel back in the 1200s.

With extra oxygen in the airstream, the thrust increases dramatically; the extra fuel, however, adds weight to the rocket.

The light weight of the hydrogen cuts down on the heft that must be thrust upwards.

He first envisioned the concept in 1861, long before other scientists ever thought of rockets for space travel.

These rockets use compressed air burned with the rocket exhaust to create high speeds at good efficiency.

It was the year Robert Goddard worked out a few kinks in the development of these kinds of rockets.

His first rocket flew for fewer than three seconds and went four stories high.

The rocket sent John Glenn into orbit, where he circled the Earth three times.

The U.S. X-15 went right up to the edge of outer space, meaning the pilots technically qualified as astronauts.

That's about Mach 6.72; that speed was achieved in October 1967.

These fuels are pretty stable; liquid fuel, however, is loaded just before the rocket is launched.

That means rockets work even in space, a place where jets would be useless.

Once a solid rocket starts, it goes until the fuel is depleted.

If they ever became a reality, they could be very useful for deep space missions.

The rocket system accelerates working fluid and eventually creates thrust to launch the rocket.

Liquid rockets require extra parts, like storage tanks and pumps, that add to their overall heftiness.

The two huge boosters on the sides of the shuttles carried large loads of solid fuel for the journey towards space.

The Saturn V is the rocket that enabled the Apollo missions to the moon.

The rocket had two burn phases and three types of fuel, including liquid kerosene, liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen.

The incredible thrust was necessary to send the 363-foot-tall rocket into the heavens.

The crazy amount of power created by the Saturn V was nearly impossible to understand in layman terms.