INTRODUCTION TO

ROCKET PROPULSION

Prepared by: Engr. Raymond Niño T. Miranda

HISTORY OF ROCKET

The writings of Aulus Gellius, a Roman, tell a story of a Greek named Archytas
who lived in the city of Tarentum, now a part of southern Italy. Somewhere around the
year 400 B.C., Archytas mystified and amused the citizens of Tarentum by flying a
pigeon made of wood. Escaping steam propelled the bird suspended on wires. The
pigeon used the action-reaction principle, which was not stated as a scientific law until
the 17th century.

About three hundred years after the pigeon, another Greek, Hero of Alexandria,
invented a similar rocket-like device called an aeolipile. It, too, used steam as a
propulsive gas.

Hero mounted a sphere on top of a water kettle. A fire below the kettle turned the
water into steam, and the gas traveled through pipes to the sphere. Two L-shaped
tubes on opposite sides of the sphere allowed the gas to escape, and in doing so gave
a thrust to the sphere that caused it to rotate.
In the first century A.D., the Chinese reportedly had a simple form of gunpowder made from saltpeter, sulfur,
and charcoal dust. To create explosions during religious festivals, they filled bamboo tubes with a mixture and
tossed them into fires. Perhaps some of those tubes failed to explode and instead skittered out of the fires,
propelled by the gases and sparks produced by the burning gunpowder.

The Chinese began experimenting with the gunpowder-filled tubes. At some point, they attached bamboo tubes
to arrows and launched them with bows. Soon they discovered that these gunpowder tubes could launch
themselves just by the power produced from the escaping gas. The true rocket was discovered.

The date reporting the first use of true rockets was in 1232. At this time, the Chinese and the Mongols were at
war with each other. During the battle of Kai-Keng, the Chinese repelled the Mongol invaders by a barrage of
"arrows of flying fire." These fire-arrows were a simple form of a solid-propellant rocket. A tube, capped at one
end, contained gunpowder. The other end was left open and the tube was attached to a long stick.
Following the battle of Kai-Keng, the Mongols produced rockets of their own and may have been responsible for the spread of rockets
to Europe.

In England, a monk named Roger Bacon worked on improved forms of gunpowder that greatly increased the range of
rockets.

In France, Jean Froissart found that more accurate flights could be achieved by launching rockets through tubes.
Froissart's idea was the forerunner of the modern bazooka.

Joanes de Fontana of Italy designed a surface-running rocket-powered torpedo for setting enemy ships on fire.

Johann Schmidlap, invented the "step rocket," a multi-staged vehicle for lifting fireworks to higher altitudes. A large sky
rocket (first stage) carried a smaller sky rocket (second stage). When the large rocket burned out, the smaller one
continued to a higher altitude before showering the sky with glowing cinders. Schmidlap's idea is basic
to all rockets today that go into outer space.

Chinese official named Wan-Hu assembled a rocket- powered flying chair. Attached to the chair were
two large kites, and fixed to the kites were forty- seven fire-arrow rockets.
 
During the latter part of the 17th century, the scientific foundations for modern rocketry were laid by the great English scientist Sir Isaac
Newton (1642-1727). Newton organized his understanding of physical motion into three scientific laws. The laws explain how
rockets work and why they are able to work in the vacuum of outer space. Newton's laws soon began to have a practical
impact on the design of rockets. About 1720, a Dutch professor, Willem Gravesande, built model cars propelled by jets of
steam. Rocket experimenters in Germany and Russia began working with rockets with a mass of more than 45 kilograms.
Some of these rockets were so powerful that their escaping exhaust flames bored deep holes in the ground even before lift-
off.
MIDTERM
Classification of Rockets
In a broad sense, propulsion is the act of changing the motion of a body. Propulsion
mechanisms provide forces which move bodies that are initially at rest, change a
constant velocity motion, or overcome retarding forces when a body is propelled
through a medium. There are two essential elements in any propulsive mechanism:
the energy source and an energy conversion device to transpose the energy into the
form most suitable for propulsion.
In an automobile, for example, a chemical combustion process of fuel
with air furnishes the energy input, which is then transformed in an
engine into thermal energy of a gas and subsequently by transformation
into the mechanical energy through a rotating shaft and wheels to
imparting momentum to the vehicle.
Jet propulsion is a special kind of propulsion; it is a means of locomotion whereby a reaction is imparted to a
device by the momentum of ejected matter. There are two types of jet propulsion: rocket propulsion, where
the matter, called Propellant, which is to be ejected is stored internally within the moving device, and duct
propulsion, where the surrounding fluid is ducted through the device and accelerated to a greater momentum
by mechanical or thermal means prior to ejection. Duct propulsion devices utilize mostly the surrounding
medium as “working fluid” rather than stored propellant. Duct propulsion is a class of jet propulsion and
includes turbojets and ramjets; these engines are commonly called as air-breathing engines.
The energy source most useful to rocket propulsion is chemical
combustion. Energy can also be supplied by solar radiation and on rare
occasion also by nuclear reaction. Accordingly, the various propulsion
devices can be divided into chemical propulsion, nuclear propulsion,
and solar propulsion.
DUCT JET PROPULSION
This class includes turbojets, turbofans, ramjets and pulsejets and is mentioned primarily to provide
an overall comparison with rocket propulsion and an understanding of combination rocket-duct
engines, which are mentioned later. A high specific impulse is directly related to a long flight range
and thus indicates the superior range capability of the air breather engines over chemical rockets at
relatively low altitude.
ROCKET PROPULSION
Rocket propulsion systems can be classified according to
the type of energy source (chemical, nuclear or solar),
the basic function (booster stage, sustainer, attitude
control, station keeping, etc.), size, type of propellant,
type of construction, or number of rocket propulsion
units used in a given vehicle.
Chemical Rocket Propulsion
The energy from a high-pressure combustion reaction of propellant chemicals, usually a fuel and an
oxidizing chemicals, permits the heating of reaction product gases to very high temperatures (2500-4100
degrees Celsius or 4500-7400 degrees Fahrenheit). These gases subsequently are expanded in a nozzle and
accelerate to high velocities (1800-4300 m/sec or 5905-14108 ft/sec). According to the physical state of the
propellant, there are several different classes of chemical rocket propulsion devices.

Liquid propellant rocket engines use liquid propellants that are fed under pressure
from tanks into a thrust chamber. The liquid propellants usually consists of a liquid
oxidizer(e.g., liquid oxygen) and a liquid fuel(e.g., gasoline). In the thrust chamber, the
propellants react to form hot gases, which in turn are accelerated and ejected at a high
velocity through a supersonic nozzle, thereby imparting momentum to the system.
solid propellant rocket motors, the propellant to be burned is contained within the combustion
chamber or case. The solid propellant charge is called grain and it contains all the chemical elements
for complete burning. Once ignited, it usually burns smoothly at a predetermined rate on the exposed
surface of the charge. There are no feed systems or valves.
Gaseous propellant rocket engines use stored high-pressure gas as their working fluid or
propellant. The stored gas requires relatively heavy tanks. These engines were used on many early
space vehicles as attitude control system.
Hybrid propellant rocket propulsion systems use both a liquid and a solid propellant. For example, if
a liquid oxidizing agent is ejected into a combustion chamber filled with solid carbonaceous fuel grain,
the chemical reaction produces hot combustion gases. There are also chemical rocket propulsion
combination systems that have both solid and liquid propellants. One example is a pressurized liquid
propellant that uses a solid propellant to generate hot gases for tank pressurization; flexible
diaphragms are necessary to separate the hot gas and the reactive liquid propellant in the tank.
Key points
The energy form found in the output of a rocket is the
kinetic energy of the ejected matter; thus the rocket
converts the input from the energy source into this form.
The propellants react to form hot gases, which in turn
are accelerated and ejected at a high velocity through a
supersonic nozzle.