How Do We Launch Things into Space?

We use big pushes to send things up into space, just like when you push a toy car really hard and it zooms away.

Imagine your favorite toy is stuck on a slide that goes all the way to the sky, but instead of sliding down, we want it to go up. To do that, we need something strong enough to lift it off the ground and keep pushing it until it's high above us, where there's no air to slow it down.

Rockets are like super-powered toy cars. They have strong engines that burn fuel really fast, making a lot of force, this is called thrust . The more thrust, the faster the rocket goes!

Rockets work by pushing down, which makes them go up. Think about when you jump on a trampoline, you push down with your feet, and the trampoline pushes you up. Rockets do something similar, but instead of a trampoline, they use fire and speed.

When the fuel burns, it goes out the bottom of the rocket like smoke from a chimney. This makes the rocket go up, just like when you blow air out of a balloon to make it zoom around the room.