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Description

What Are Rockets?

When where rockets invented?
The first known rockets were used in China in the 1200s. These solid rockets were used for fireworks. They also were used by armies for war. In the 1300s, these rockets were used for the same purposes through much of Asia and Europe. In the next 600 years, people developed bigger and better solid rockets. Many of these were used by the military.

In 1903, a Russian teacher named Konstantin Tsiolkovsky wrote a paper describing the idea of liquid-fuel rockets. In 1926, American scientist Robert Goddard flew the first liquid-fuel rocket.

German scientists led by Hermann Oberth improved liquid-fuel rockets. During World War II, Germany used rockets to bomb other countries.

In 1957, the Soviet Union used a rocket to launch the first satellite.

In 1961, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin rode in a rocket to become the first person in space.

In 1969, the United States launched the first men to land on the moon – Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin – using a Saturn V rocket.

(Source: NASA, 2025)

Resources

Planning and setting up this activity
Fuse beads, thermobeads, iron beads, or iron-fusible beads are multicoloured tubular plastic beads that can be arranged into 2D designs on a pegboard. They can be fused together by the application of a hot iron through baking paper to form mosaics. You can find them in lots of toy shops or craft stores.
Print off or gather some pictures of different types of rockets that have gone into space. They can be a mix of modern rockets and ones from a long time ago.

Instructions

Running this activity
Gather everyone around and ask if anyone knows what a rocket is.
Explain that a rocket is used to carry a spacecraft from Earth's surface to space, usually to low Earth orbit or beyond. It’s sometimes called a launch vehicle. Although rockets may appear similar, no two are alike because they are complex devices with millions of pieces and systems that must be calculated and constructed to work together. A rocket is chosen based on the spacecraft’s mission requirements. For example, the farther away from Earth the spacecraft needs to go, the bigger and more powerful the rocket needs to be (Source: NASA, 2025).
Show everyone the photos of rockets from different years and different space missions. You could see if they can put them in the right order from oldest to newest.
As a group, talk about and compare the rockets. You could talk about if their size, shape, purpose or colours are similar or different. You could also ask people to vote for their favourite one.
Tell everyone they’re going to a rocket out of fuse beads. They could choose a rocket to copy.
If you’ve time, let people draw their design out on grid paper, so they can copy it. You could also print out some designs or pictures of space-themed fuse bead shapes for inspiration.
Give everyone a pegboard shape (such as a circle or a square), and a pot of beads.
Let everyone make their design on the pegboard.
When they’re done, they should place their pegboard carefully to one side, such as on a table. They can then cut out and carefully place some baking paper over their pegboard and beads, so it’s ready to be ironed.
An adult should set up the iron. Make sure any cables are tidy and safely managed, so they can’t be tripped over, and the iron must always be supervised by an adult.
For each design, an adult should hold the iron on top of the baking paper for a few minutes to melt the beads together. Always follow the instructions on for the bead’s you're using.
Once ironed, place the ironed beads to one side to cool down, out of reach of young people.
Once everyone’s finished their rocket, they could make another design. They could make a planet, a rocket, an alien or something else. They could design something to use. For example, a round planet may make a great coaster.
At the end, you could let people use thread to hang up their designs. You can pass the thread through one of the holes in the beads.

Tags

• Hamma Beads
• Rockets

Badge Links

• Space - Rockets