Editing Rocket (section)

==The Physics of Rocketry==

The functioning and physics of rockets generally revolves around Newton's Third Law of Motion, commonly simplified as "For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction." All a rocket boils down to is a tube filled with something either very explosive (like, say, gunpowder) or something under pressure that wants to get out of the tube (like, say, steam or water). When you close one end of that tube, the contents will force their way out of the open end, causing a reaction that pushes the tube into the air. This is of course assuming that the tube is made of a material of sufficient strength to survive the reaction or else what you have is a bomb, not a rocket. It ain't rocket sci— Wait a minute...

The ballistics of rockets work a little bit differently than those of, say, bullets or arrows. In a bullet, the propelling force comes from outside; the bullet is pushed by expanding gasses, but once it's left the gun there is nothing to continue moving it forwards and it will start to decelerate. Rockets, on the other hand, generally produce continuous but much weaker thrust for the first few seconds of their trajectory, leading to slower acceleration but generally longer time in flight.