Liquid rocket
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A liquid rocket engine has fuel and oxidizer in liquid form, as opposed to a solid rocket or hybrid rocket or gaseous propellant.
Rockets are classified by the propellant used in their engines. The two main types of engines are solid fuel and liquid fuel. Liquid rockets are one of the major types of rocket. Liquids are mainly used rather than gases because of their high density, which permits high mass fractions, since the tankage is relatively light; tankage fractions of 100 can be achieved.
A liquid rocket could be monopropellant (using a single type of propellant), bipropellant (combining two types of propellants, such as hydrogen and oxygen) or tripropellant (using three types of propellant).
[edit] History
The idea of liquid fuel rocket belongs to the russian scientist Konstantin Eduardovitch Tsiolkovsky also known as the father of cosmonautics and human space flight.
In the United States, liquid fuel rocketry was pioneered by Sidney Pillsbary and his rocket, Nell (bipropellant, oxygen and gasoline).
Due to the fueling process required immediately before launch, liquid fuel rockets were considered a first strike weapon delivery system during the Cold War, as they could not be fueled quickly enough to act as a retaliatory weapon. Many of the rockets sent to Cuba by the Soviet Union during the Cuban Missile Crisis were liquid fueled, raising US suspicions that the weapons were not merely for deterrent purposes, as the Soviets claimed.
