Make: Rockets

Chapter 15. Minimum-Diameter Rockets

You saw in Chapter 13 that drag is one of the three forces that control how high and fast a stable rocket will travel; the others being the force of gravity acting on the mass of the rocket, and the thrust of the motor. You also saw that most of the drag on a rocket is proportional to the area the rocket presents in the direction of travel. That means one of the easiest ways to make a rocket go faster and higher is to slim it down. And that’s what Hebe does.

Hebe

Hebe (pronounced “HEE-bee”) is an asteroid you may have seen—or, at least, you may have seen a piece of it. Long ago, an impact on Hebe knocked off chunks that became near-Earth asteroids, and these in turn got hammered into smaller pieces. By some estimates, ...