Jonetc15 wrote:An incredibly naive question, but I wonder how in deep space (no gravity and no atmosphere) a rocket accelerates in what seems to be a vacuum. I.e. there seems to be nothing which the rockets can push against - if you see what I mean...
I’ll probably regret asking something so basic.
Jon
When I was at school 50+ years ago and the whole Apollo program was big news, this very same question came up and my physics teacher came up with a simple experiment that we could do to help our understanding of Newton's 3rd law of motion.
She borrowed a medicine ball from the gym and we went over to the park across the road.
One person sat on a swing with the medicine ball and waited until it stabilised.
They then pushed the ball away from them, which caused them to move the other way.
A rocket, firework night or Apollo sized works by throwing away lots and lots of very small particles in the same direction, very, very, quickly, causing the rocket to move in the opposite direction. Gravity and atmosphere are just getting in the way.
Slarti