A solid-propellant rocket or solid rocket is a rocket with a rocket engine that uses solid propellants (fuel/oxidizer). The earliest rockets were solid-fuel rockets powered by gunpowder;they were used in warfare by the Chinese,Indians,Mongols and Persians as early as the 13th century.
Specific impulse is a measure of how efficiently a reaction mass engine,such as a rocket using propellant or a jet engine using fuel,generates thrust. For engines like cold gas thrusters whose reaction mass is only the fuel they carry,specific impulse is exactly proportional to the effective exhaust gas velocity.
Soyuz is a family of expendable Russian and Soviet carrier rockets developed by OKB-1 and manufactured by Progress Rocket Space Centre in Samara,Russia. With over 1,900 flights since its debut in 1966,the Soyuz is the rocket with the most launches in the history of spaceflight.
The R-7 Semyorka,officially the GRAU index 8K71,was a Soviet missile developed during the Cold War,and the world's first intercontinental ballistic missile. The R-7 made 28 launches between 1957 and 1961 a derivative,the R-7A,was operational from 1960 to 1968. To the West it was unknown until its launch. In modified form,it launched Sputnik 1,the first artificial satellite,into orbit,and became the basis for the R-7 family which includes Sputnik,Luna,Molniya,Vostok,and Voskhod space launchers,as well as later Soyuz variants. Various modifications are still in use and it has become the world’s most reliable space launcher.
Vostok was a family of rockets derived from the Soviet R-7 Semyorka ICBM and was designed for the human spaceflight programme. This family of rockets launched the first artificial satellite and the first crewed spacecraft (Vostok) in human history. It was a subset of the R-7 family of rockets.
The Voskhod was a spacecraft built by the Soviet Union's space program for human spaceflight as part of the Voskhod programme. It was a development of and a follow-on to the Vostok spacecraft. Voskhod 1 was used for a three-man flight whereas Voskhod 2 had a crew of two. They consisted of a spherical descent module,which housed the cosmonauts,and instruments,and a conical equipment module,which contained propellant and the engine system. Voskhod was superseded by the Soyuz spacecraft in 1967.
A liquid-propellant rocket or liquid rocket utilizes a rocket engine that uses liquid propellants. Gaseous propellants may also be used but are not common because of their low density and difficulty with common pumping methods. Liquids are desirable because they have a reasonably high density and high specific impulse (Isp). This allows the volume of the propellant tanks to be relatively low. The rocket propellants are usually pumped into the combustion chamber with a lightweight centrifugal turbopump,although some aerospace companies have found ways to use electric pumps with batteries,allowing the propellants to be kept under low pressure. This permits the use of low-mass propellant tanks that do not need to resist the high pressures needed to store significant amounts of gasses,resulting in a low mass ratio for the rocket.
The Vanguard rocket was intended to be the first launch vehicle the United States would use to place a satellite into orbit. Instead,the Sputnik crisis caused by the surprise launch of Sputnik 1 led the U.S.,after the failure of Vanguard TV-3,to quickly orbit the Explorer 1 satellite using a Juno I rocket,making Vanguard 1 the second successful U.S. orbital launch.
The Angara rocket family is a family of launch vehicles being developed by the Moscow-based Khrunichev State Research and Production Space Center. The launch vehicles are to put between 3,800 kg (8,400 lb) and 24,500 kg (54,000 lb) into low Earth orbit and are intended,along with Soyuz-2 variants,to replace several existing launch vehicles.
The highest specific impulse chemical rockets use liquid propellants. They can consist of a single chemical or a mix of two chemicals,called bipropellants. Bipropellants can further be divided into two categories;hypergolic propellants,which ignite when the fuel and oxidizer make contact,and non-hypergolic propellants which require an ignition source.
The RD-8 is a Soviet / Ukrainian liquid propellant rocket engine burning LOX and RG-1 in an oxidizer rich staged combustion cycle. It has a four combustion chambers that provide thrust vector control by gimbaling each of the nozzles in a single axis ±33°. It was designed in Dnipropetrovsk by the Yuzhnoye Design Bureau as the vernier thruster of the Zenit second stage. As such,it has always been paired with the RD-120 engine for main propulsion.
The RD-107 and its sibling,the RD-108,are a type of rocket engine initially used to launch R-7 Semyorka missiles. RD-107 engines were later used on space launch vehicles based on the R-7. As of 2021,very similar RD-107A and RD-108A engines are used to launch the Soyuz-2.1a,and Soyuz-2.1b,which are in active service.
The Keldysh bomber was a Soviet design for a rocket-powered sub-orbital bomber spaceplane,which drew heavily upon work carried out by Eugen Sänger and Irene Bredt for the German Silbervogel project.
The Soviet RD-0120 (also designated 11D122) was the Energia core rocket engine,fueled by LH2/LOX,roughly equivalent to the Space Shuttle Main Engine (SSME). These were attached to the Energia core rather than the orbiter,so were not recoverable after a flight,but created a more modular design (the Energia core could be used for a variety of missions besides launching the shuttle). The RD-0120 and the SSME have both similarities and differences. The RD-0120 achieved a slightly higher specific impulse and combustion chamber pressure with reduced complexity and cost (but it was single-use),as compared to the SSME. It uses a fuel-rich staged combustion cycle and a single shaft to drive both the fuel and oxidizer turbopumps. Some of the Russian design features,such as the simpler and cheaper channel wall nozzles,were evaluated by Rocketdyne for possible upgrades to the SSME. It achieved combustion stability without the acoustic resonance chambers that the SSME required.
The RD-701 is a liquid-fuel rocket engine developed by Energomash,Russia. It was briefly proposed to propel the reusable MAKS space plane,but the project was cancelled shortly before the end of USSR. The RD-701 is a tripropellant engine that uses a staged combustion cycle with afterburning of oxidizer-rich hot turbine gas. The RD-701 has two modes. Mode 1 uses three components:LOX as an oxidizer and a fuel mixture of RP-1 / LH2 which is used in the lower atmosphere. Mode 2 also uses LOX,with LH2 as fuel in vacuum where atmospheric influence is negligible.
The Long March 7,or Chang Zheng 7 in pinyin,abbreviated LM-7 for export or CZ-7 within China,originally Long March 2F/H or Chang Zheng 2F/H,nicknamed Bingjian,is a Chinese liquid-fuelled launch vehicle of the Long March family,developed by the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CAST). It made its inaugural flight on 25 June 2016.
Fastrac was a turbo pump-fed,liquid rocket engine. The engine was designed by NASA as part of the low cost X-34 Reusable Launch Vehicle (RLV) and as part of the Low Cost Booster Technology project. This engine was later known as the MC-1 engine when it was merged into the X-34 project.
The Algol family of solid-fuel rocket stages and boosters is built by Aerojet and used on a variety of launch vehicles. It was developed by Aerojet from the earlier Jupiter Senior and the Navy Polaris programs. Upgrades to the Algol motor occurred from 1960 until the retirement of the Scout launch vehicle in 1994.
The RD-810 (РД-810) is a Ukrainian liquid propellant rocket engine burning LOX and Kerosene (RG-1) in a staged combustion cycle. It has a single combustion chamber that provides thrust vector control by gimbaling of the nozzle in two axis by +/- 8°. It is being designed in Ukraine by Yuzhnoye Design Bureau for the prospective first stage propulsion of the Mayak rocket family.
The Raptor is a family of full-flow staged-combustion-cycle rocket engines developed and manufactured by SpaceX for use on the SpaceX Starship. The engine is powered by cryogenic liquid methane and liquid oxygen ("methalox"),as opposed to the RP-1 and liquid oxygen ("kerolox") combination used in SpaceX's earlier Merlin and Kestrel rocket engines. The Raptor engine has about triple the thrust of SpaceX's Merlin 1D engine,which powers the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launch vehicles.
