Space shuttle

Space cohete.

39A launch base sending the Saturn V rocket to the Moon.

A space rocket, also called a vector, launcher, shuttle, or vehicle launch space, is a type of rocket designed and used specifically for transporting payloads from the earth's surface to outer space. Generally, the flight of a space rocket is aimed at placing its payload in a certain orbit, although some rockets can perform suborbital flights. In that case, they are often referred to as sounding rockets. The payload of a space rocket is mainly artificial satellites, spacecraft, and space probes, although they can also be humans in the case of human spaceflight. One can also speak of space launch system when referring, in addition to the space launch vehicle itself, to the support infrastructures necessary to launch and operate the space vehicle.

History

Background

One of the rockets developed by Robert Hutchings Goddard.

The origin of the rocket is probably oriental. The first news of its use is from the year 1232, in China, where gunpowder was invented.

There are some accounts of the use of rockets called flying fire arrows in the 13th century, in defense of the capital of the Chinese province of Henan.

Rockets were introduced to Europe by the Arabs. During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries it was used as an incendiary weapon. Later, with the improvement of artillery, the war rocket disappeared until the XIX century, and was used again during the Napoleonic Wars.. The English colonel William Congreve's rockets were used in Spain during the siege of Cádiz (1810), in the first Carlist War (1833-1840) and during the Moroccan war (1860).

Modern Times

Late 19th century and early XX, the first scientists appeared who turned the rocket into a system to propel manned space vehicles. Among them are the Peruvian Pedro Paulet, the Russian Konstantín Tsiolkovski, the German Hermann Oberth and the American Robert Hutchings Goddard, and later the Russians Sergei Koroliov and Valentin Gruchensko, and the German Wernher von Braun.

Robert Hutchings Goddard was responsible for the first flight of a rocket propelled with liquid fuel (gasoline and oxygen), launched on March 16, 1926, in Auburn, Massachusetts, United States. The rockets built by Goddard, although small, already had all the principles of modern rockets, like gyroscope guidance, for example.

Russian/Soviet R-7 Cohete.

The Germans, led by Wernher von Braun, developed during World War II the V-1 and V-2 rockets (A-4 in German terminology), which were the basis for the Postwar US and USSR rocket research. Both Nazi bombs, used to bomb London at the end of the war, can be defined as missiles. The V-1 isn't really a rocket, but a missile that flies like a jet-powered plane.

Cohete Saturno V being released.

Initially, rockets specifically intended for military use, commonly known as ballistic missiles, were developed. The space programs that the Americans and the Russians launched were based on rockets designed with their own purposes for astronautics, derived from these rockets for military use. In particular, the rockets used in the Soviet space program were derivatives of the R-7, a ballistic missile, which ended up being used to launch the Sputnik missions.

Notable, on the US side, are the Astrobee, the Vanguard, the Redstone, the Atlas, the Agena, the Thor-Agena, the Atlas-Centaur, the Delta series, the Titans and the Saturn (including the Saturn V - the largest rocket of all time, which made the Apollo program possible), and, on the Soviet side, the rockets designated by the letters A, B, C, D and G (these last two had a similar role to the Saturn Americans), called Proton.

Other countries that have built rockets, within the framework of their own space program, are France, Great Britain (which abandoned it), Japan, China, Mexico, Argentina, Brazil and India, as well as the European consortium that formed the European Space Agency (ESA), which has built and operated the Ariane launcher.

Operation

Rocket engine.

The principle of operation of the rocket engine: the gases expelled by the opening cause a movement up by reaction.

The principle of operation of the rocket motor is based on Newton's third law, the law of action and reaction, which says that "every action has a reaction, with the same intensity, same direction and opposite direction".

Let's imagine a closed chamber where there is a burning gas. The burning of the gas will produce pressure in all directions. The chamber will not move in either direction as the forces on the opposite walls of the chamber will cancel.

If we make an opening in the chamber, where the gases can escape, there will be an imbalance. The pressure exerted on the opposite side walls will continue without producing force, since the pressure of one side will cancel the other. The pressure exerted on the upper part of the chamber will produce thrust, since there is no pressure on the bottom side (where the opening is).

Scattering diagram of the Saturn IB rocket.

Thus, the rocket will move upwards by reaction to the pressure exerted by the burning gases in the engine's combustion chamber. For this reason, this type of engine is called jet propulsion.

As in outer space there is no oxygen to burn the fuel, the rocket must carry stored in tanks not only the fuel (fuel), but also the oxidant (oxidizer).

The magnitude of the thrust produced (an expression designating the force produced by the rocket motor) depends on the mass and velocity of the gases expelled through the opening. Then, the higher the temperature of the expelled gases, the greater the thrust. Thus, the problem of protecting the combustion chamber and the opening from the high temperatures produced by combustion arises. An ingenious way to do this is to coat the engine walls with a thin stream of the rocket's own propellant used to form a thermal insulator and cool the engine.

Types

Astrobee: American rocket.

Regarding the type of fuel used, there are two types of rocket:

• Liquid fuel cohete - in which the propellant and oxidant are stored in tanks outside the combustion chamber and are pumped and mixed into the chamber where they enter combustion;
• Solid fuel cohete - in which both, propellant and oxidant, are already mixed in solid-state combustion chamber.

Regarding the number of phases, a rocket can be:

• Cohete of a phase - in this case the rocket is "monolithic";
• Multi-phase cohete - has multiple phases that are entering into combustion sequentially and are being discarded when the fuel is depleted, allowing to increase the load capacity of the rocket.

A Ukrainian Zenit-2 prepared for launch

Regarding its reusability, a rocket can be:

• Disposable launch vehicle (ELV) - are designed to be used once. They are usually separated from their useful load and perform an atmospheric reentry.
• Reusable launch vehicle (RLV) - offer the possibility of recovering the system intact once it has been used, thus it can be used in various releases, decreasing the processing costs. The space shuttle and the SpaceX Falcon 9 are notable examples of reusable launch vehicles.

Regarding the amount of payload that vehicles are capable of putting into orbit, we can find the following types, among others:

• Heavy Load Launch Vehicle (HLLV)
• Overweight cargo launch vehicle (SHLLV)

Applications

The importance of rockets as vehicles lies in two characteristics:

1. Its ability to reach high speeds and accelerations.
2. Your ability to function in the vacuum.

The first of these characteristics is what has promoted its historical use in the military field and in fireworks shows, the second was not significant until the appearance of astronautics in the 1950s.

Military use

Russian anti-aircraft missile.

The rocket is a means capable of transporting a payload at high speeds from one point to another. As a weapon, a rocket can carry an explosive (conventional or nuclear) great distances in a short time, sometimes taking the enemy by surprise. The rocket has other advantages over projectiles: it has a larger radius of action and its trajectory can be controlled.

There are military rockets (also called missiles) of a wide variety of sizes, power, and radius of action. The small ones can be launched directly by soldiers or from moving vehicles, and are often used to attack enemy aircraft. The ability to control their flight also allows them to be used to engage stationary targets quite accurately.

Large missiles can have a radius of action of thousands of kilometers, and are used to bomb installations introduced into enemy territory without the need to send troops or planes. Its great speed also makes it difficult to intercept. Of special attention are intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM in English terminology). These rockets have a range of thousands of kilometers and follow a ballistic trajectory that effectively takes them out of the Earth's atmosphere. Armed with nuclear explosives, they constitute an important means of deterrence, since they allow attacking the heart of the enemy nation no matter how far away it is, without it having any means to prevent their arrival.

Civilian use

Outside the military, the most important use of rockets is to launch objects into outer space, usually by placing them in orbit around the Earth. For this objective, the rocket is the only means available. On the one hand, they are the only vehicles capable of reaching the speed necessary for this application, and on the other, only the rocket is capable of propelling itself in the vacuum of space. The other vehicles need a material medium on which to move, or they obtain some essential element for their functioning from the medium.

However, the rocket is still an ineffective means of launching objects into space. Due to its very nature, the rocket will always have to be much larger than the object it has to transport, and this means that in a launch most of the energy will be used to accelerate the rocket itself, and not its payload. For example, a fuel-laden Ariane 5 rocket weighs around 750 tons, of which only 20 tons can actually be put into orbit. However, there are no short- or long-term alternatives on the rocket for this application.

Another slightly different use of rockets is in microgravity studies. A rocket can put an object on a ballistic trajectory outside the atmosphere, where it will not be subjected to the friction of the air and will therefore be in a situation of free fall, equivalent to the absence of gravity for many physical phenomena.

Due to the growing development and high technology involved, vocational rocketry, also known as amateur rocketry, cannot be left aside.

Regulation

The operations of space launch rockets are regulated under international law, as well as under the national laws of the territory where the launch occurs. In any case, material and human damage derived from an error in the launch or atmospheric re-entry of the rocket must be covered. Because of these requirements, many countries require rocket builders to adhere to very strict launch safety regulations, as well as to purchase liability insurance to indemnify people, property, and property that may be damaged..

Examples

General data						Release history
Name	Version	First launch	Last release	Builder	User	T	E	P	F
Ariane 4	Ariane 40	22/01/1990	03/12/99	Ariane	ESA Ariane	4	7	0	0
	Ariane 42P	20/11/1990	04/05/02			15	14	0	1
	Ariane 42L	12/05/1993	23/01/02			13	13	0	0
	Ariane 44P	04/04/1991	25/09/01			15	15	0	0
	Ariane 40LP	15/06/1988	27/11/01			26	25	0	1
	Ariane 40L	06/06/1989	15/02/03			40	39	0	1
Ariane 5	Ariane 5G	04/06/1996	27/09/03	EADS	ESA Ariane	16	13	2	1
	Ariane 5G+	02/03/2004	18/12/04			3	3	0	0
	Ariane 5GS	11/08/2005	Operational			5	5	0	0
	Ariane 5ECA	11/12/2002	Operational			22	22	0	1
	Ariane 5ES	09/03/2008	Operational			1	1	0	0
Naro-1	Naro-1	25/08/2009	Off.	Khrunichev KARI	KARI	3	1	2	0
Proton-M	Proton-M Briz-M PII	07/07/2007	14/11/10	Khrunichev	RSA	12
	Proton-M Blok-DM-03	05/12/2010	Operational			3
PSLV	PSLV	20/09/1993	Operational	ISRO	ISRO	10	8	1	1
	PSLV-CA	23/04/2007	Operational			5	5	0	0
	PSLV-XL	22/10/2008	Operational			1	1	0	0
Electron	Electron	25/05/2017	Operational	Rocket Lab	Rocket Lab NASA	5	4	0	1
Delta IV	Delta IV Medium	11/03/2003	Off.	ULA Boeing	NASA ULA	3	3	0	0
	Delta IV Medium+ (4.2)	20/11/2002	Off.			13	13	0	0
	Delta IV Medium+ (5.2)	03/06/2012	Off.			1	1	0	0
	Delta IV Medium+ (5.4)	06/12/2009	Off.			5	5	0	0
	Delta IV Heavy	21/12/2004	Operational			8	7	0	1
Atlas V	Atlas V (401)	21/08/2002	Operational	ULA Boeing Lockheed	ULA NASA	7	6	1	0
	Atlas V (411)	20/04/2006	Operational			2	2	0	0
	Atlas V (421)	10/10/2007	Operational			3	3	0	0
	Atlas V (431)	11/03/2005	Operational			1	1	0	0
	Atlas V (521)	17/07/2003	Operational			2	2	0	0
	Atlas V (551)	19/01/2006	Operational			1	1	0	0
Falcon 9	Falcon 9 V1.0	04/06/2010	Operational	SpaceX	SpaceX	5	4	0	1
	Falcon 9 V1.1	29/09/2013	Operational			15	14	1	0
	Falcon 9 FT	22/12/2015	Operational			49	49	0	0
Falcon Heavy	Falcon Heavy	06/02/2018	Operational	SpaceX	SpaceX	1	1	0	0
CZ-1	Long March 1 CZ-1	24/04/1970	03/03/71	MAI CASC CAST	CNSA	2	2	0	0
	Long March 1 CZ-1D	01/06/1995	01/03/02	CALT	CNSA	3	2	1	0
CZ-2	Long March CZ-2	05/11/1974	Off.	CALT	CNSA	1	0	0	1
	Long March CZ-2A	26/11/1975	Off.			3	3	0	0
	Long March CZ-2C	09/09/1982	Off.			44	43	0	1
	Long March CZ-2D	09/08/1992	Off.			22	22	0	0
	Long March CZ-2E	16/07/1990	Off.			7	4	1	2
	Long March CZ-2F	19/11/1999	Off.			11	1	0	0
CZ-3A	Long March 3 CZ-3A	08/02/1994	09/07/18	CALT	CNSA	27	27	0	0
CZ-3B	Long March 3 CZ-3B	13/02/1996	18/09/12	CALT	CNSA	12	10	1	1
	Long March 3 CZ-3BE	12/05/2007	Operational			43	42	1	0
CZ-3C	Long March 3 CZ-3C	25/04/2008	01/02/16	CALT	CNSA	12	12	0	0
	Long March 3 CZ-3CE	23/10/2014	Operational			4	4	0	0
CZ-4A	Long March 4 CZ-4A	06/09/1988	03/09/90	CALT	CNSA	2	2	0	0
CZ-4B	Long March 4 CZ-4B	11/05/1999	24/10/18	SAST	CNSA	31	30	1	0
CZ-4C	Long March 4 CZ-4C	24/04/2006	Off.	SAST	CNSA	25	24	1	0
CZ-5	Long March 5 CZ-5	03/11/2016	Operational	CALT	CNSA	2	1	1	0
CZ-6	Long March 6 CZ-6	19/09/2015	Operational	SAST	CNSA	2	2	0	0
CZ-7	Long March 7 CZ-7	25/06/2016	Operational	CALT	CNSA	2	2	0	0
CZ-11	Long March 11 CZ-11	25/09/2015	Operational	CALT	CNSA	6	6	0	0

Future

An escape cloud enguls the 39A launch platform at NASA's Kennedy Center in Florida, the Endeavour space shuttle takes off to the night sky.

The conventional rocket will have to go through some advances in the next few years, although it will still be largely responsible for sending astronauts and artificial satellites into space for a long time.

Adoption of reusable vehicles, like NASA's space shuttle, should be expanded. Space shuttles take off like a conventional rocket, but land like airplanes, thanks to their special aerodynamics.

A revolutionary engine, which can advance astronautical technology, is the Scramjet engine, capable of reaching hypersonic speeds of up to 15 times the speed of sound. The Scramjet engine has no moving parts, and obtains the necessary compression for combustion from the air that enters from the front, driven by the vehicle's own speed in the air. NASA successfully tested such an engine in 2004. The rocket, named X-43A, was carried to an altitude of 12,000m by a B-52 aircraft, and launched by a Pegasus rocket to an altitude of 33,000m.. It reached the record speed of 11,000 km/h.

Another possibility for advancement in rocket engine technology is the use of nuclear propulsion, in which a nuclear reactor heats a gas, producing a jet that is used to produce thrust. The idea of building a sail-shaped rocket, propelled by solar radiation pressure, which would allow long-distance interplanetary travel, has also been considered.

Additional bibliography

• George P. Sutton, Oscar Biblarz: Rocket Propulsion Elements. Wiley-Interscience (2000) ISBN 0-471-32642-9
• David G. Sleeter: Amateur Rocket Motor Construction: A Complete Guide To The Construction Of Homemade Solid Fuel Rocket Motors. Teleflite Corp (2004). ISBN 0-930387-04-X
• Guillermo Descalzo: Cohetes - Space Modeling, Initial Level (in Spanish) Ed. Dunken (2005). ISBN 987-02-1585-8