rocket summary

Written and fact-checked by The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

Below is the article summary. For the full article, see rocket.

Apollo 15 liftoff
Saturn V rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida, with the Apollo 15 spacecraft, July 26, 1971.

rocket, Type of jet-propulsion device that uses either solid or liquid propellants to provide the fuel and oxidizer needed for combustion. The hot gases provided by combustion are ejected in a jet through a nozzle at the rear of the rocket. The term is also commonly applied to any of various vehicles, including fireworks, skyrockets, guided missiles, and launch vehicles for spacecraft, that are driven by such a propulsive device. Typically, thrust (force causing forward motion) is produced by reaction to a rearward expulsion of hot gases at extremely high speed (see Newton’s laws of motion).

Robert Goddard Summary

Robert Goddard was an American professor and inventor generally acknowledged to be the father of modern rocketry. He published his classic treatise, A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes, in 1919. Goddard was the only child of a bookkeeper, salesman, and machine-shop owner of modest means. The boy

Wernher von Braun Summary

Wernher von Braun was a German engineer who played a prominent role in all aspects of rocketry and space exploration, first in Germany and after World War II in the United States. Braun was born into a prosperous aristocratic family. His mother encouraged young Wernher’s curiosity by giving him a

Theodore von Kármán Summary

Theodore von Kármán was a Hungarian-born American research engineer best known for his pioneering work in the use of mathematics and the basic sciences in aeronautics and astronautics. His laboratory at the California Institute of Technology later became the National Aeronautics and Space

launch vehicle Summary

Launch vehicle, in spaceflight, a rocket-powered vehicle used to transport a spacecraft beyond Earth’s atmosphere, either into orbit around Earth or to some other destination in outer space. Practical launch vehicles have been used to send crewed spacecraft, uncrewed space probes, and satellites