Frequently Asked Questions

The following questions come from 10 years of email from water-rockets.com users who have written to ask:

1. Is it hard to make a rocket? Can you provide plans for how to build a rocket, and step-by-step instructions?
2. Why use metal motors? Would it be better, if you use plastic bottles for the body of the water-rocket?
3. How much water do you put in a water rocket?
4. How do you fly an egg within a nose cone?
5. What are hot-water rockets?
6. What's the maximum safe pressure I should try to put in a 2-liter bottle?
7. As I change from a bicycle pump to an air compressor, are there factors I am overlooking?
8. How do you calculate ballistic trajectories?
9. How do you make two stage rockets?
10. How do I build a safe water rocket and that will go very high?
11. What is load fraction?
12. What do the simulation program variables mean and how do I measure and find them?
13. How do you measure flight height (apogee) if the rockets are shot straight up?
14. How can I optimize the performance of my rocket?
15. What size or shape fins are best?
16. How does the simulation work?
17. How do I build a launcher?
18. More Details
19. What materials to use for rockets? Where do you get them?
20. What are Newton's Laws?
21. What is the best fin shape, size, and placement?
22. How do you use the java simulation?
23. What makes a water rocket stay in the air the longest?
24. How do I make and attach a parachute to the rocket?
25. How to get maximum height?
26. How did you get to make your rocket go fast?
27. What physics governs the launch?
28. Why does air resistance alter the speed of the rockets?
29. Got diagram of new generation rocket yet?
30. How do you make your fins? And what do you make them out of?
31. How do you solder the cans together?
32. Safety of launch?
33. How to release the rocket?
34. Engineered materials?
35. Why do you use CO₂? Why not ordinary compressed air?
36. What makes a rocket efficient?
37. Can I buy a launcher?
38. What is a water rocket?
39. How do you pressurize the motor?
40. Water rocket books?
41. Design safety rules…
42. What's the water rocket for?
43. Who invented water rockets?
44. When was the first rocket made?
45. Design Software?