How a launch vehicle works

Stages

A basic approach to launch vehicle design, first suggested by Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, is to divide the vehicle into “stages.” The first stage is the heaviest part of the vehicle and has the largest rocket engines, the largest fuel and oxidizer tanks, and the highest thrust; its task is to impart the initial thrust needed to overcome Earth’s gravity and thus to lift the total weight of the vehicle and its payload off of Earth. When the first-stage propellants are used up, that stage is detached from the remaining parts of the launch vehicle and falls back to Earth, either into the ocean or onto sparsely populated territory. With the weight of the first stage gone, a second stage, with its own rocket engines and propellants, continues to accelerate the vehicle. Most expendable launch vehicles in use today have only two or three stages, but in the past up to five stages, each lighter than its predecessor, were needed to attain orbital velocity. When an upper stage has completed its mission, it either falls back to Earth’s surface, enters orbit itself, or, most frequently, disintegrates and evaporates as it encounters atmospheric heating on its fall back toward Earth.

A particular launch vehicle can be configured in several different ways, depending on its mission and the weight of the spacecraft to be launched. This reconfiguration can be done by adding a varying number of strap-on boosters, usually solid rocket motors, to the vehicle’s first stage or by using different upper stages.

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In principle, a space launcher could reach Earth orbit using only one stage, and in fact there have been several attempts to develop a reusable “single stage to orbit” vehicle. All attempts have failed, however; the propulsion and materials technologies needed to make a single-stage vehicle light and powerful enough to achieve orbital velocity while carrying a meaningful payload have not been developed.

Upper stages

All launch vehicles employ more than one stage to accelerate spacecraft to orbital velocity. Since the first orbital launch (Sputnik), in 1957, there have been many different upper stages. Most are used as part of only one type of launch vehicle. The evolution of these upper stages is driven by a desire to introduce more modern technology that will increase the overall lift capability of the launch vehicle, lower its costs, and increase its reliability—or a combination of these factors. Small improvements in upper stages can produce significant gains in launch vehicle performance, since these stages operate only after the first stage has accelerated the vehicle to a high speed through the thickest parts of the atmosphere.

Several upper stages have been used with more than one family of launch vehicle. For example, the Agena upper stage was first developed in the United States as part of its initial reconnaissance satellite program. The Agena upper stage of a Thor-Agena launch vehicle propelled the Corona spacecraft into orbit, stayed attached to it, and provided power and pointing for the spacecraft’s operation. Agena used hypergolic propellant; it was also combined with the Atlas and Titan first stages on a number of subsequent missions. Later versions of Agena were able to restart their engine in orbit, carried other national security payloads, sent Ranger and Lunar Orbiter spacecraft to the Moon and Mariner spacecraft to Venus and Mars, and served as the target vehicle for rendezvous by the Gemini two-man spacecraft. Use of the Agena upper stage extended through the mid-1980s.

Another U.S. upper stage, used with the Atlas and Titan launch vehicles, is Centaur. This was the first U.S. rocket stage to employ cryogenic propellant. The first use of the Atlas-Centaur launch vehicle was to send Surveyor spacecraft to the Moon in 1966 and 1967; it flew many subsequent missions atop an Atlas first stage. When combined with powerful versions of the Titan launch vehicle, Centaur also has been used to send various spacecraft to Mars and the outer planets and to launch various heavy national security payloads.

Various upper stages using solid propellants were used to carry payloads from the space shuttle’s low Earth orbit to higher orbits. There were plans to carry the liquid-fueled Centaur on the shuttle to launch planetary spacecraft, but those plans were canceled after the 1986 Challenger accident because of safety concerns. Solid-propellant upper stages have also been used with the Delta and Titan launch vehicles.

Soviet and Russian launch vehicles have used a variety of upper stages; most have used conventional kerosene as fuel. More recently two upper stages, the Block DM using cryogenic propellant and the more popular Briz M using hypergolic propellant, have been developed for the Proton launcher. There has been a constant evolution of upper stages used with the Soyuz launcher; in 1999 upper stages with restartable rocket engines entered service.

The ESA used a cryogenic upper stage for its Ariane 1–4 launchers. Initial versions of the Ariane 5 used hypergolic propellant in its upper stage, though a new cryogenic upper stage was introduced in 2006. Japan and India use cryogenic propellants in the upper stages of their most powerful launch vehicles, the H-IIA and the GSLV, respectively.

Fuel

The fuel used to power rockets can be divided into two broad categories: liquid and solid. Liquid fuels can range from a widely available substance such as ordinary kerosene, which can be used at ground temperature, to liquid hydrogen, which must be maintained at the extremely low temperature of 20 °K (−253 °C, or −423 °F). Liquid hydrogen is called a cryogenic fuel. Another type of liquid fuel, called hypergolic, ignites spontaneously on contact with an oxidizer; such fuels are usually some form of hydrazine. Hypergolic fuels are extremely toxic and thus difficult to handle. However, because of their reliable ignition and their ability to be restarted, they are used in the first or second stages of some rockets and in other applications such as orbital maneuvering motors. During the Apollo program they were used to lift the crew compartment of the lunar module off of the Moon’s surface.

In order to burn, liquid rocket fuel must be mixed in the combustion chamber of a rocket engine with an oxygen-rich substance, called an oxidizer. The oxidizer usually used with both kerosene and liquid hydrogen is liquid oxygen. Oxygen must be kept at a temperature less than −183 °C (−298 °F) in order to remain in a liquid state. The oxidizer used with hypergolic fuel is usually nitrogen tetroxide or nitric acid. Like hypergolic fuel, the oxidizers are extremely toxic substances and so are difficult to handle.

Liquid-fuel rocket engines are complex machines. In order to reach maximum efficiency, both fuel and oxidizer must be pumped into the engine’s combustion chamber at high rates, under high pressure, and in suitable mixtures. The fuel pumps are driven by a turbine powered by the burning of a small proportion of the fuel. There are various approaches to powering the turbomachinery of a rocket engine, but all require high-performance mechanisms and are one of the major potential sources of launch vehicle failure. After combustion, the resulting exhaust gas exits through a nozzle with a shape that accelerates it to a high velocity.

Solid-propellant rocket motors are simple in design, in many ways resembling large fireworks. They consist of a casing filled with a rubbery mixture of solid compounds (both fuel and oxidizer) that burn at a rapid rate after ignition. The fuel is usually some organic material or powdered aluminum; the oxidizer is most often ammonium perchlorate. These are mixed together and are cured with a binder to form the rocket propellant. Solid rocket motors are most often used as strap-ons to the liquid-fueled first stage of a launch vehicle to provide additional thrust during liftoff and the first few minutes of flight. (However, the United States has begun development of a new launch vehicle named Ares-1 that will use a large solid rocket motor as its first stage.) Unlike some rocket engines using liquid fuels, which can be turned off after ignition, solid rocket motors once ignited burn their fuel until it is exhausted. The exhaust from the burning of the fuel emerges through a nozzle at the bottom of the rocket casing, and that nozzle shapes and accelerates the exhaust to provide the reactive forward thrust.

Payload protection

The spacecraft that a launch vehicle carries into space is almost always attached to the top of the vehicle. During the transit of the atmosphere, the payload is protected by some sort of fairing, often made of lightweight composite material. Once the launch vehicle is beyond the densest part of the atmosphere, this fairing is shed. After the spacecraft reaches initial orbital velocity, it may be detached from the launch vehicle’s final upper stage to begin its mission. Alternatively, if the spacecraft is intended to be placed in other than a low Earth orbit, the upper-stage rocket engine may be shut down for a period of time as the spacecraft payload coasts in orbit. Then the engine is restarted to impart the additional velocity needed to move the payload to a higher Earth orbit or to inject it into a trajectory that will carry it deeper into space.

Navigation, guidance, and control

In order for a launch vehicle to place a spacecraft in the intended orbit, it must have navigation, guidance, and control capabilities. Navigation is needed to determine the vehicle’s position, velocity, and orientation at any point in its trajectory. As these variables are measured, the vehicle’s guidance system determines what course corrections are needed to steer the vehicle to its desired target. Control systems are used to implement the guidance commands through movements of the vehicle’s rocket engines or changes in the direction of the vehicle’s thrust. Navigation, guidance, and control for most launch vehicles are achieved by a combination of complex software, computers, and other hardware devices.

Reliability

A launch vehicle thus comprises one or more rocket engines; fuel for those engines carried in fuel tanks; guidance, navigation, and control systems; a payload; and a structure housing all of these elements, to which extra engines may be attached for added lift. There are also various attachments between the launch vehicle and its launchpad and associated structures. An expendable launch vehicle has only one opportunity to perform its mission successfully, so all of its elements must be designed and manufactured precisely and for very high operational reliability. Also, as noted above, launch vehicles are designed to be as light as possible, in order to maximize their payload lifting capability. As a result, every part in a launch vehicle operates close to its breaking point during a launch, as the vehicle undergoes the stresses associated with accelerating past the speed of sound and transiting the atmosphere and as its rocket engines operate under extremes of pressure, temperature, shock, and vibration.

The end result is that launching a spacecraft into outer space remains an extremely difficult undertaking and that launch failures are a fact of life for those seeking access to space. Many space launches, particularly those carrying commercial spacecraft, are insured against failure, since they often represent an investment of more than a hundred million dollars.

Launch vehicles that carry people into space are “human rated.” This means that they use components of the highest possible reliability, have redundancy in critical systems, undergo more testing prior to launch than does a launch vehicle carrying an automated spacecraft, and contain systems that warn of impending problems so that a crew might be able to escape an accident. There has been only one failure of a launch vehicle at liftoff that resulted in crew fatalities; this was the explosion of the Challenger, on January 28, 1986, which killed all seven astronauts aboard.