What is the purpose of rockets making white smoke lines all over the sky?

Question

i often see rockets making white lines all over the sky from their tails with smoke. i wonder what is the purpose behind it.

Answer 1

Are you sure those are really rockets? There are not that many launched, you know, and the tend to go up quite quickly so unless you are down range from a rocket launch pad, you probably never seen a rocket.

I tend to have a hunch that what you are talking about can be contrails from high altitude airliners. If this is so, and then they can be in all directions (while rockets are essentially launched towards the east to get an extra nude from the earth's rotation) this is not smoke, it is just the engine exhaust, a mix of carbon dioxide and water vapor from the combustion of hydrocarbon fuel, that cools in the very chilly air at those altitude (10000 m and above). The ice crystals form and look just like a cloud that can dissipate at varying rate depending on how humid it is up there.

Answer 2

Those are contrails or vapor trails caused by airline engine exhaust and wigtip vortices. The principal byproducts of jet engine exhaust are carbon dioxide and water. Because the air temperature at airline cruising altitude is as much as 40 degrees below zero, the water vapor that is expelled from the engines freezes and actually forms little cirrus clouds. If you look carefully at the front of a contrail you can see the airplane causing it.

Answer 3

The white lines generally seen are called con trails(or vapor trails). It is from jet engines on airplanes and they are condensation trails from the exhaust of the jets which do contain water in the vapor form.

Answer 4

I'm assuming your thinking of jet engines making contrails.
It's mostley from hot engine air entering cold air...kind of like seeing your breath on cold days.

Then there are those conspiracy theorist thinking it's gov'ts of the world spraying chemicals over the population that would eventually control them for a one world gov't.

Answer 5

first off, burning things make smoke, and second, it is an easy way to spot it.

Answer 6

ummmm rockets? where do you live? iraq?

Answer 7

airplanes