Fundamentally, reaction engines are different from gasoline, electric, or steam engines, which is one of the main reasons they are installed on space rockets. A well-known Newtonian principle says every action needs to have an opposite and equal reaction serving as basic knowledge for constructing a rocket engine. Mass is thrown in a certain direction by a rocket engine, and so it benefits from a reaction happening in the opposite direction. But let’s dig in a bit deeper.
How does a reaction engine work?
In a sense, reaction rocket engines are easy to understand and simple to build, so you could launch some of your model rockets without even spending too much money. However, since they have very complicated fuel systems, only three nations worldwide have successfully put humans into orbit so far. Perhaps you are asking, what is a reaction engine in a rocket? Or maybe, you have all sorts of technical explanations of your own about intricacies surrounding reaction engines. If you so, keep on reading — we will explain it all below.
Typically, rocket engines launch a high-pressure gas mass. To create a reaction that moves in an opposite direction, an engine releases a large mass, aka “an amount” of gas. Rocket fuel weight accounts for the gas mass and is accelerated during the burning phase. This means it leaves the nozzle of a rocket quickly. And when fuel is burning, it doesn’t lose any of its mass because it changes from liquid or solid state to gas. One pound of burned rocket fuel will amount to one pound of high-velocity and high-temperature gas expelled through the rocket’s nozzle. The mass remains constant, but its form doesn’t — because mass is accelerated during the burning process.
How can rocket engine chemical reaction be explained?
Orbital Today tries to explain a chemical reaction that has reaction engines working, as it’s well-known that there is no oxygen in space. By using special fuel and an oxidizer that starts the combustion reaction, rockets can travel into space without needing oxygen. A rocket will store the oxidizer and fuel it needs. The combustion reaction generates high-pressure gases that are later discharged at the rocket’s back and provide forward thrust.
In other words, a rocket engine fires action-reaction happens through combustion that only needs fuel and an oxidizer. Another interesting thing to know is that rocket engines don’t always need to use fire to provide thrust. Instead, just expelling “mass” can do the same. The propellants used for Dozens of different fuel-oxidizer mixes have been used to make space rockets work so far, but liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen continue to be the most effective fuel examples. And since we have touched on the subject of propellants now, let’s analyze what else has been discovered to keep reaction engines running.
For example, aluminum powder is used as a fuel source, whereas ammonium perchlorate is used as an oxidizer in almost all reaction engines running on solid propellant. Most often used hypergolic fuels are hydrazine, unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine, and monomethylhydrazine. These frequently get combined with nitrogen tetroxide, which is an oxidizer, to cause a spontaneous fire that eliminates the need for any oxygen. Monopropellants are made of compounds that, upon chemical breakdown, expel mass and release energy. These propellants often consist of substances that have been subjected to different iridium catalyst types, such as hydrazine or concentrated hydrogen peroxide.
Are reaction engines with no chemical reaction possible?
Reaction engines that chemically burn fuel to produce thrust are commonplace. However, there are still many other alternative methods to produce this ‘push.’ Any mechanism capable of throwing mass will work. For example, a very practical rocket engine could be built if one could find the technique of propelling baseballs at very high speeds. The only drawback to this would remain to be the “exhaust” of baseballs. High-speed baseballs would be no less, left streaming across space. Due to this, rocket engine designers tend to select gases as the end output.
Numerous rocket engines built so far are rather small. For instance, satellite attitude thrusters shouldn’t generate a lot of force. Thrusters that run on pressurized nitrogen are typical for satellites, as they essentially blast nitrogen gas via a nozzle and from the tank. These thruster types, which are also used in the human maneuvering system of a shuttle, made sure that Skylab is in orbit.
All sorts of new reaction engines designed are attempting to produce thrust more effectively. For example, space engineers are now trying to figure out just how they can accelerate atomic particles or ions to incredibly high speeds. The first spacecraft to employ propulsion ion engines was NASA’s Deep Space-1. But considering how fast reaction and other types of rocket engines are evolving, we may soon see a thruster that outperforms current reaction engines.
