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From blastoff to touchdown, a rocket is an awesome sight.
The Saturn 5 rocket that sent astronauts to the Moon weighed more than 6 million pounds. It stood 363 feet high. That’s about as tall as a 30-story building. Its 11 rocket engines sent a spacecraft weighing more than 100,000 pounds to a lunar landing.
In 1930, Robert Goddard started earthlings on the path toward space. The Massachusetts-born scientist was working almost totally alone. Thirty-nine years after Goddard shot off his first rocket, U.S. astronaut Neil Armstrong took his first step on the Moon. Since then, rockets have lifted hundreds of spacecraft and satellites into orbit. They’ve carried space shuttles to and from the International Space Station. They’ve sent unmanned spacecraft to Mars and Jupiter. Some of the satellites send us information about Earth’s atmosphere and weather.
A rocket is a type of engine. It produces more power for its size than any other type of engine. A rocket can produce about 3,000 times more power than a car engine of the same size. ▼
Dr. Robert Goddard stands with one of his rockets. Each part was made by hand in his workshop.
▲ All through his career, Goddard worked mostly alone. He had very little money or support. Serious scientists didn’t think rocket research was a proper subject, so he experimented with rockets in his free time. He did most of his experiments on his aunt’s Massachusetts farm.
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◀ Robert Goddard called himself a “one-dream man,” and that dream was to send a rocket into space. It all started on October 19, 1899, when he was 17 years old. He had climbed a ladder to trim branches from a cherry tree. As he looked up, he had a vision of traveling into space. He later wrote, “I was a different boy when I descended the tree from when I ascended.” From then on, he celebrated October 19th as the anniversary of his scientific birthday.
The Chinese invented rockets more than 1,000 years ago. The first ones were tubes packed with gunpowder (which the Chinese also invented). In the 1200s, Chinese soldiers fired these rockets at their enemies. ▶
◀ During the War of 1812, the British fired rockets on Maryland’s Fort McHenry. Watching the attack, Francis Scott Key was inspired to write about the “rockets’ red glare.” You probably know that line from America’s national anthem, “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
▲ During World War II, Wernher von Braun led German scientists in developing V-2 guided missiles. Germans used these deadly missiles on London during the war. American forces captured V-2s and sent them home to be studied. After the war, von Braun and other German scientists came to the U.S. They continued to develop rockets, which were used as weapons and in space travel.
▲ Today, rockets are part of modern warfare. Rocket-propelled grenades, or RPGs, can blow up lightly armored vehicles.
▲ In 1919, Goddard published a paper describing how rockets could reach the Moon. He had his first success in 1926: his liquid-fueled rocket climbed 41 feet at about 60 mph and landed 184 feet from the launchpad.
So how does a rocket work? Burning propellant powers it. Propellant is a fuel, such as gasoline, kerosene, or liquid hydrogen, plus a source of oxygen. The rocket needs its own oxygen to help the fuel burn because outer space has little oxygen. Most space rockets have two or three stages. The first stage, called a booster, launches the rocket. After the propellant burns, the spacecraft releases that stage of the rocket and uses the next one.
