Rockets operate on a pretty simple principle: if you throw something out the back really fast, the rocket goes forward. Practically speaking, we accomplish this with a combination of chemistry Keep reading
Tag: rocket nozzle
Shock Diamonds
Rocket engine exhaust often contains a distinctive pattern known as shock diamonds or Mach diamonds. These are a series of shock waves and expansion fans that increase and decrease, respectively, Keep reading
Mach Diamonds
Rocket engines often feature a distinctive pattern of diamonds in their exhaust. These shock diamonds, also known as Mach diamonds, are formed as result of a pressure imbalance between the Keep reading
Start Your Rocket Engine
When supersonic flow is achieved through a wind tunnel or rocket nozzle, the flow is said to have “started”. For this to happen, a shock wave must pass through, leaving Keep reading
SpaceShipTwo Lights It Up
Monday morning Virgin Galactic and their partners at Scaled Composites reached a new milestone in their commercial sub-orbital spaceflight program, firing SpaceShipTwo’s main engine for the first time and accelerating Keep reading
Bottle Rocket Shock Waves
This high speed video shows schlieren photography of a bottle rocket’s exhaust. The supersonic CO2 leaving the nozzle is underexpanded, meaning its pressure is still higher than the ambient atmosphere. Keep reading
Unsteady Rocket Nozzle
This numerical simulation gives a glimpse of flow inside an unsteady rocket nozzle. The nozzle is over-expanded, meaning that the exhaust’s pressure is lower than that of the ambient atmosphere. Keep reading
Homemade Hybrid Rocket Engine
In this video, Ben Krasnow details and demos a small hybrid rocket engine he built in his workshop. Hybrid rockets utilize propellants that are two different states of matter, in Keep reading
Rocket Engine Test
[original media no longer available] In this static test of XCOR Aerospace’s Lynx rocket engine, Mach diamonds (shown at the top of the frame) are visible in the rocket exhaust. Keep reading
Starting a Rocket
This computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation shows the start-up of a two-dimensional, ideal rocket nozzle. Starting a rocket engine or supersonic wind tunnel is more complicated than its subsonic counterpart Keep reading