Rocket Science

Released: May 9, 2026 8:00 AM CST

Here is the forty-ninth episode of Quantum Foam, Rocket Science. This is an interesting topic. At the heart of rocketry is Sir Isaac Newton's Third Law Of Motion. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. In a rocket, the end product is being pushed upward and burning fuel out of the back of the rocket. There is a lot of complex engineering that is inside a rocket. Imagine building one of these complicated machines. Rockets push material out of the back in order to move forward. Burning and energizing gas is able to give thrust to a rocket. Modern designs use either specialist solid fuel or gases that are being kept in the state of liquefied hydrogen. There needs to be an oxidizer in order to play the part of air. This may be liquid oxygen or other substances. The earliest rockets were used as firework displays and weaponry in China. A place of research is the Pasadena Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Maybe 1 day they will have space hotels and we could go to space. The early Atlas rockets were used to get astronauts into space. Rockets carry an oxidizer in order to burn fuel in space. NASA has many times uses a hydrogen and oxygen propelled rocket. You often have multiple stages when launching big rockets. By dropping off a stage when its fuel is exhausted, the remaining rocket becomes lighter that takes less fuel to accelerate it. It just makes sense to dump off the extra weight and mass when sending a rocket to space from the ground on Earth. The space shuttle was crucial in building the International Space Station. We need to have the ability to refuel a ship in Earth's orbit to be used on missions to the moon, Mars, and beyond. This is the goal of current Rocket Science.

Spaceflight was a dream that became a reality in the twentieth century. I am on board with the 3 musketeers. Dr. Michio Kaku, Elon Musk, and myself are all 3 constituents on the path laid out by Isaac Asimov. We want to get to Mars and we want our life's work to matter. We are contributing to the idea that humankind become a multiplanetary civilization. We want to set events in order for this to become a reality. Rockets are precise instruments made possible with Newton's laws, thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, and the vast realm of astrophysics. It is worth it to listen to Startalk with Neil DeGrasse Tyson. He is an astrophysicist. When a rocket fires its engines, it expels mass in the form of high-speed gas out of its rear nozzle. The action is the ejection of gas. The reaction is the forward thrust of the rocket. A rocket doesn't need anything to push against. It creates its own push by hurling mass backward using chemical energy. Newton's First Law explains why a rocket needs to overcome inertia. Newton' Second Law is that force is equal to mass times acceleration. Thrust is the force that moves the rocket forward generated by the expulsion of exhaust gases. The thrust is given by an equation. Thrust equals mass flow rate times exhaust velocity. This is a direct application of Newton's Second and Third Laws. The more exhaust ejected, the greater the thrust. In order to achieve escape velocity and leave the Earth, the rocket must be staged. Mass is shed and efficiency is improved. Multi-stage rockets are the solution to the mass problem. Engineers divide the rocket launch into segments called stages.