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rocket
rocket any vehicle propelled by ejection of the gases produced by combustion of self-contained propellants. Rockets are used in fireworks, as military weapons, and in scientific applications such as space exploration.
Rocket Propulsion
The force acting on a rocket, called its thrust, is e...
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Robert Hutchings Goddard
Robert Hutchings Goddard 1882-1945, American physicist and rocket expert, b. Worcester, Mass., grad. Worcester Polytechnic Institute (B.S., 1908), Ph.D. Clark Univ., 1911. From 1914 he was associated with Clark Univ., becoming a professor of physics in 1919. Goddard designed and built early high al...
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Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky
Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky , 1857-1935, Russian inventor and rocket expert. He lost his hearing in childhood, and, as he could not attend the usual schools, he educated himself. His most important work was concerned with the possibility of rocket flight into outer space. Tsiolkovsky's The I...
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Hermann Julius Oberth
Hermann Julius Oberth 1894-1989, Austro-German astronautical pioneer, b. Hermannstadt, Austria-Hungary (now Sibiu, Romania). Beginning his studies in astronautics before World War I, he first proposed a liquid-propellant rocket in 1917 and in 1923 published his unsuccessful Ph.D. dissertation, T...
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bazooka
bazooka in warfare, portable, lightweight metal tube from which rockets are launched, usually operated by two men. It is used by infantry as an antitank weapon and also for attacking pillboxes and bunkers. In general, the bazooka is a short-range weapon with low accuracy; however, it gives the indi...
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space shuttle
space shuttle Re-usable rocket-powered US spacecraft. The main part of the shuttle, the orbiter (of which four have been built, Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, and Atlantis), looks like a bulky jet aircraft with swept-back wings. It ferries people and equipment between the ground and Earth orbit. ...
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Redstone Arsenal
Redstone Arsenal U.S. rocket research and development center, 38,781 acres (15,694 hectares), N Ala., W of Huntsville; est. 1941. One of the state's largest industrial enterprises, it includes the Army Missile Command, responsible for the army's rocket and guided missile program; the Army Missile a...
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Wernher von Braun
Wernher von Braun , 1912-77, German-American rocket expert, b. Germany, grad. Berlin Technological Institute (B.S., 1932), Univ. of Berlin (Ph.D., 1934). Devoted to the pursuit of rocketry and spaceflight since his teenage years, von Braun assisted Hermann Oberth after 1930 in early experiments in...
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Elton Hercules John
Elton Hercules John 1947-, English popular singer, pianist, and composer, b. Reginald Kenneth Dwight. By the mid-1970s he had become famous presenting his own and other composers' songs in spectacularly staged productions. His songs include "Benny and the Jets," "Rocket Man," and "Candle ...
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mesosphere
mesosphere The middle layer of Earth's atmosphere, lying above the stratosphere and below the thermosphere, at altitudes of 50–85 km. Temperatures in the mesosphere fall with increasing altitude, reaching a minimum at the mesopause. Measurements from sounding rockets indicate the mesos...
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