Liquid-Propellant Rocket Engine

Rocket · 1926

Year: 1926
Kind: Rocket
Efficiency: Around 60 % of the chemical energy becomes jet kinetic energy; what matters is specific impulse — 300 to 450 seconds.
Used In: Every orbital launch, and every landing.
Power Density: The highest of anything: an F-1 engine made about 1.5 gigawatts of jet power.
Cycle: None

Materials

Copper-alloy chamber liners cooled by the fuel running through channels, nickel superalloys, niobium nozzle extensions, and welds that must not fail.

How It Works

Fuel and oxidiser — kerosene, hydrogen or methane with liquid oxygen — are pumped into a chamber, burn at 3,000 K, and the gas expands through a bell nozzle to several kilometres a second. It carries its own oxygen, so it works in vacuum; it can be throttled and restarted; and its turbopumps are the most power-dense machines ever built.

Inventors

Robert Goddard Wernher von Braun

Equations

Newton's Second Law Bernoulli's Equation Specific Impulse Tsiolkovsky Rocket Equation Newton's Third Law Momentum and Impulse Conservation of Momentum

Elements

Hydrogen Copper Nickel Niobium Oxygen

Referenced by

element

Copper Hydrogen Nickel Niobium Oxygen

equation

Bernoulli's Equation Conservation of Momentum Momentum and Impulse Newton's Second Law Newton's Third Law Specific Impulse Tsiolkovsky Rocket Equation

researcher

Robert Goddard Wernher von Braun

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From the Machines database in Notion, last edited 2026-08-18. This page is the row, rendered by the build; nothing on it is written by hand.