14 Facts About Rocket engine

Rocket engine uses stored rocket propellants as the reaction mass for forming a high-speed propulsive jet of fluid, usually high-temperature gas.

For example, if an Rocket engine producing 100 pounds of thrust runs for 320 seconds and burns 100 pounds of propellant, then the specific impulse is 320 seconds.

Maximum efficiency for a rocket engine is achieved by maximising the momentum contribution of the equation without incurring penalties from over expanding the exhaust.

Rocket engine nozzles are surprisingly efficient heat engines for generating a high speed jet, as a consequence of the high combustion temperature and high compression ratio.

Rocket engine nozzles give an excellent approximation to adiabatic expansion which is a reversible process, and hence they give efficiencies which are very close to that of the Carnot cycle.

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Materials technology, combined with the engine design, is a limiting factor in chemical rockets.

Also, when the vehicle is moving slowly, little of the chemical energy input to the engine can go into increasing the kinetic energy of the rocket .

Rocket engine vehicles have a reputation for unreliability and danger; especially catastrophic failures.

The Pratt and Whitney RL10 Rocket engine, used in a cluster of six in the Saturn I second stage, had no catastrophic failures in 36 Rocket engine-flights.

Space Shuttle Solid Rocket Booster, used in pairs, caused one notable catastrophic failure in 270 engine-flights.

Rocket engine propellants require a high energy per unit mass, which must be balanced against the tendency of highly energetic propellants to spontaneously explode.

The Rocket engine thrust is directly related to the surface area of the solar collector and to the local intensity of the solar radiation and inversely proportional to the Isp.

Rocket engine was the first to develop the Tsiolkovsky rocket equation, though it was not published widely for some years.

Rocket engine calculated from his independently derived rocket equation that a reasonably sized rocket, using solid fuel, could place a one-pound payload on the Moon.