Building Propulsion Systems for Rockets and, Measurement and Analysis of Heights Attained After Launch

Abstract

Rocket uses the principle of variable mass system and Newton's laws of motion. In this study three propulsion systems were designed, the propulsions systems were air pressure based, CO2 based and Chemical based. The aim of this study was to calculate the theoretical height attained by the rockets under lab conditions and compare it with the actual height attained, for this purpose, attained height (Ha) vs estimated height (He) ratio is calculated, and is termed as the efficiency of the rocket propulsion system. A total of five launches for each propulsion system is conducted and the efficiencies are calculated as follows, for air-based propulsion system  0.56 +/- 0.12, for CO2 based propulsion system 0.30 +/- 0.09 and for chemical-based propulsion system it is  0.30 +/- 0.07.