The Rocket From East To West Reading Answers: IELTS Reading Practice Test

The Rocket From East To West Reading Passage

Paragraph A

The basic principle of the rocket, or preferably the apparatus behind the notion of moving an object into the air, has been around for well over 2 millennium years. Nevertheless, it wasn't till the finding of the reaction principle, which was the opener for space travel and so represented one of the immense milestones in the history of scientific concepts, that rocket technology was able to expand. Not only did it conclude an issue that had interested man for ages, but, more essentially, it opened the door to the study of the universe.

Paragraph B

An intellectual advancement, luminous though it may be, does not spontaneously make sure that the change is made from theory to practice. Notwithstanding the fact that rockets had been used occasionally for a few hundred folds, they dwelled as a comparatively minor artefact of civilisation till the 20th century. Colossal attempts, accelerated throughout two world wars, were needed before the technology of ancient rocket engineers could be translated into the actuality of worldly cosmonauts. It is unfamiliar that the rocket was normally disregarded by writers of novels to transport their heroes to puzzling kingdoms beyond the Earth, yet it has been often used in fireworks displays in China since the 13th century. The reaction principle is the notion of travelling through space to the nearest world.

Paragraph C

Through an analogy, we can realise how a rocket works. It is much like a machine gun ascending on the back of the boat. In response to the reverse discharge of bullets, the gun, and hence the boat, move ahead. A rocket motor's 'bullets' are tiny, high-speed specks manufactured by flaming propellants in an acceptable room. The response to the emission of these tiny specks causes the rocket to move ahead. There is proof that the reaction truth was appealed almost well before the rocket was innovated. In his Noctes Atticae or Greek Nights, Aulus Gellius explained ‘the squab of Archyats’, an innovation dating back to about 360 BC. Cylindrical in shape, made of wood, and hanging from twine, it was passed to and away by water vapour blowing out from the tiny exhaust boatyard at either conclusion. The reaction to the discharging stem provided the bird with the power of motive.

Paragraph D

The innovation of rockets is connected indistinguishably with the innovation of ‘black powder’. Most chroniclers of automation credit the Chinese with its discovery. They founded their faith on studies of Chinese writings or on the notepad of early Europeans who sought out or made wide visits to China to study its chronicle and advancement. It is likely that sometime in the 10th century, black powder was first aggravated from its origin components of nitre, carbon and brimstone. But this does not mean that it was instantly used to move rockets. By the 13th century, powder-moved fire shafts had become rather normal. The Chinese depend on this type of automation growth to manufacture combustible missiles of many kinds of device ammunition and perhaps cannons to repulse their opponent. One such shield was the ‘basket of fire’ or, as straightly translated from Chinese, the ‘arrows like flying leopards’. The 0.7 metre-long shaft, each with a lengthy tube of black power fixed near the point of each shaft, could be fired from a lengthy octadic-shaped basket at the same time and had a span of 400 paces. One more shield was the ‘arrow as a flying sabre’, which could be fired from ammunition. The rocket, spotted in a similar location to other rocket-moved shafts, was planned to increase the span. A tiny iron weight was connected to the 1.5m bamboo arrow, just beneath the feathers, to improve the shaft’s firmness by propelling the middle of gravity to a position beneath the rocket. At the same time, the Arabs had expanded the ‘egg which moves and burns’. This ‘egg’ was seemingly full of black powder and balanced by a 1.5m tail. It was fired using two rockets fixed to either side of the back end.

Paragraph E

It was not till the 18th century that Europe became solemnly attentive to the chance of utilising the rocket itself as a shield of war and not just to move other shields. Earlier to this, rockets were used only in fireworks displays. The inducement for the more hostile use of rockets came not from inside the European continent but from distant India, whose heads had built up a corps of astronauts and used rockets profitably opposed to the British in the late 18th century. The Indian rockets used against the British were narrated by a British commander serving in India as ‘an iron wrapper about 200 millimetres long and 40 millimetres in width with a sharp tip at the top and a 3m-lengthy bamboo leading stick’. In the early 19th century, the British started to test with combustible bombardment rockets. The British rocket varied from the Indian version in that it was totally framed in a stout, iron cylinder, ending in a conical head, measuring one metre in width and having a twig almost five metres lengthy and built in such a way that it could be firmly fond of to the body of the rocket. The Americans improved a rocket, entirely with its own bombarder, to use as opposed to the Mexicans in the mid-19th century. A lengthy cylindrical tube was buttressed up by two twigs and locked to the top of the launcher, thereby permitting the rockets to be inserted and set alight from the other end. However, the solutions were occasionally not impressive as the conduct of the rockets in aviation was less than foreseeable.

Paragraph F

Later, there has been enormous enlargement in rocket technology, frequently with destructive outcomes in the form of war. However, the present-day space programs owe their achievement to the respectful origination of those in the preceding centennial who expanded the base of the reaction basis. Who knows what it will be like in the upcoming days?

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