Rockets and Launchers

What this quiz asks

• Who launched the world's first liquid-fuelled rocket, a tiny ancestor of this one, in 1926?
• A rocket engine needs oxygen from the surrounding air to burn its fuel.
• Why are most rockets built in several stages?
• What is the name of China's main family of launch rockets?
• From which spaceport does Europe launch its Ariane rockets?
• Which engineer led the team that developed NASA's Saturn V Moon rocket?
• How tall, in metres, was the Saturn V rocket that launched the Apollo missions to the Moon?
• In December 2015, what did a SpaceX Falcon 9 achieve for the first time with an orbital rocket?
• Is the Soyuz rocket a descendant of the R-7, the missile that launched Sputnik 1?
• Select ALL of these rockets that were developed in the Soviet Union.
• The Space Shuttle's two solid rocket boosters were recovered from the ocean and reused.
• In June 1944 a German V-2 test rocket became the first human-made object to reach what?
• Which Soviet engineer, whose identity was kept secret until his death in 1966, was chief designer behind Sputnik and Vostok?
• Order these rockets by the year of their first flight, earliest first.
• During a launch, what is 'max Q'?
• The 'rocket equation', published in 1903, is named after which Russian schoolteacher?
• Which propellants fed both the Space Shuttle's main engines and the upper stages of the Saturn V?
• Select ALL of these that burned solid propellant.
• Roughly what speed must a spacecraft reach to stay in low orbit around the Earth?
• The Soviet N1 Moon rocket flew four times between 1969 and 1972. How many engines did its first stage have?