How Rockets Work

United Launch Alliance plans to fly its Vulcan rocket again on 13 November 2026, nine months after a solid-booster nozzle failed in flight. This film explains how any rocket works: why throwing exhaust backwards pushes it forwards even in empty space, how a nozzle turns hot gas into speed, how Tsiolkovsky's rocket equation sets the price of every kilometre per second, why rockets are mostly propellant and are built in stages, how liquid engines and solid boosters differ, what happens when a booster nozzle fails, and how it all adds up to orbit, from Goddard's 1926 flight and Thailand's Bun Bang Fai festival to Sputnik and today's satellites.

Throwing mass backwards

How rockets reach orbit.

Push and push back

A rocket pushes on its own exhaust.

Fire and fuel

From gunpowder to liquid oxygen.

The rocket equation

The price of speed.

Engines and boosters

Liquids for the long push, solids for the kick.

To orbit

Sideways, very fast.

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