Do you love space?

Ever wanted to be an astronaut and fly in a rocket ship?

Well, here are 10 strange facts about space rockets… Ready for lift off?

1. Flying chairs.

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There’s a Chinese legend about a rocket-powered chair.

According to the legend, a Chinese official named Wan-Hu once assembled a rocket-powered flying chair.

The chair had two large kites attached to either side, each equipped with 47 arrow rockets.

2. How fast?!?

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A rocket only takes 8 minutes to accelerate to a speed of 15,000 miles per hour!

That’s super fast!

In order to burst through Earth’s gravity, a rocket needs to travel at 7 miles per second! That’s like running over 120 football fields in 1 second!

3. Faster than a bullet!

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The Apollo spacecraft reached a maximum speed that was almost 8 times faster than a bullet.

It was able to reach and maintain such high speeds because once outside Earth’s gravity it didn’t have to contend with any friction generated by our atmosphere.

4. Destroyed by sound.

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When a space rocket launches, the sound it makes is so loud it could in theory destroy itself!

It creates acoustic waves of up to 180db of sound – which is almost as loud as a nuclear explosion!

To stop this happening, a sound suppressor system is built into the launch pad.

This uses water to absorb the sound waves from the rocket as it launches.

5. Print yourself a rocket.

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An Edinburgh-based company called Skyrora is currently conducting a series of tests on the next iteration of their first-of-its-kind 3D-printed rocket engines at a test site in Midlothian, Scotland.

Skyrora’s updated rocket engine is undergoing a full-duration test simulating a commercial orbital launch.

6. What happens when you run out of fuel?

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Rockets can keep flying forever in space, even when it runs out of fuel.

In space, there’s no air to slow things down, so once the rocket leaves Earth’s atmosphere, the only force acting upon it is the force of thrust from its engines.

7. Rocket noise.

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A rocket makes a noise of around 180 decibels during launch, too loud for a human to hear up close.

Water is sprayed on the the launchpad to reduce the noise to 130-140 decibels, but this is still very loud. This is similar to a plane taking off!

8. How far is the farthest rocket.

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Did you know the furthest rocket from Earth will be 6.9 million km from the centre of the Sun by 2025 and will travel as fast as 690,000 kilometres per hour when it gets super close – making it the fastest object ever built by humans!

9. Where did the word rocket come from?

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The word ‘Rocket’ comes from the Italian word “Rocchetta,” which means “bobbin” or “little spindle”.

10. First rocket into space.

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On 4rd October 1957, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1 – the first artificial satellite of Earth in the history of humankind.

On 3rd November 1957, the Soviet Union launched a second satellite, Sputnik 2 – the first to carry a living animal into orbit, a dog named Laika.

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