On what principle of conservation does thr rocket work?
Answers
Conservation of momentum — or Newton’s third law of motion in disguise.
If you accelerate a small amount of gas in one direction, it pushes back with an equal and opposite force, accelerating your much larger spaceship at a proportionately smaller rate.
So for example, the 3,270 ton Saturn V was able to accelerate gently off the pad against the pull of gravity by hurling fifteen tons of propellant per second out its tailpipe at nearly ten times the speed of sound. But that meant the rocket got lighter by 15 tons per second, so that the same amount of thrust caused it to accelerate faster and faster.
As the moment of liftoff, the Saturn was accelerating at barely over 1 G, so it just crept off the supports (though granted, it did move slower than you might think, because we often see it in slow motion).
After two minutes, it was so much lighter that the same thrust was accelerating the remaining mass at over 3.5 Gs, and the sequencers had to cut off an engine to stop the mounting force from causing damage.
That’s conservation of momentum in action.
Hope this helps U!