Building Reusable Rockets

Building Reusable Rockets — page 3 — Then the capsule begins falling back to Earth It plows into the atmosphere Next its parachutes open Just above the ground thruster rockets slow the capsule for a soft landing You leave the capsule and it is prepared for the next flight The capsule is mounted on top of a rocket again This rocket is refueled Soon the next group of space tourists will board People have used rockets for hundreds of years Chinese fireworks began using rockets in the 1200s CE Large arrows were attached to tubes filled with gunpowder When the rocket was ignited the arrow flew a long distance In the 1950s scientists and engineers worked to launch satellites into space One of these scientists was Wernher von Braun Von Braun was the main designer of the Saturn V rocket This rocket launched astronauts to the moon But

Building Reusable Rockets — page 4 — Dr Wernher von Braun stands in front of the Saturn V launch vehicle's engines the Saturn V rocket could be used only one time Von Braun wanted to build rockets that could travel to and from space many times He designed a giant rocket with a winged spacecraft on top

Building Reusable Rockets — page 5 — Von Braun's design had three main parts called stages The stages would stack on top of one another The first stage would be a huge rocket with 51 engines When this rocket ran out of fuel it would fall back to Earth Parachutes would bring it back safely so it could be used again After the rocket's first stage detached the second stage would ignite This stage would also parachute back and be reused The third stage would be a winged spacecraft It would orbit Earth before flying home to a runway However Von Braun's reusable rocket was never built It was too complicated and expensive At the time engineers were only beginning to learn how to build space rockets Many rockets crashed or exploded right after liftoff Each failure meant going back to the drawing board to try again

Building Reusable Rockets — page 6 — roviding the safest Elon Musk center founded the company SpaceX which creates reusable rockets Reusable rockets took years of hard work to develop But new materials and technologies have become available A few private companies have begun to build and launch reusable rockets

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