Rocket Workshop

Rocket Workshop is a rocket builder with real flight physics. Drag parts from the shelf onto the stand: three engines, three fuel tanks, fins, side boosters, a parachute, a crew pod, a satellite, lander legs and a nose cone. Every part has a weight and a price. Press Launch and the camera follows your rocket off the pad, past hot-air balloons and clouds, through a sky that turns from blue to starry black, with the height and speed on screen. Empty stages drop away with a soft puff, the parachute opens by itself on the way down, and a flight report shows how high and how fast you went.

The forty missions are a proper brain workout. Reach a height, deliver the satellite above a line, fly through three rings, land softly on a pad, then do it all again on the Moon, where there is no air for a parachute and you land on legs with the throttle. Each mission has a budget and a part limit, and three stars: one for the goal, one for staying under budget and one for a clean landing. Fins matter: if the air pushes higher up the rocket than its weight sits, it wobbles, cuts its engine and drifts home under its parachute. Nothing ever explodes.

Free build is the place to relax. There is no budget and no goal, just paint for the hull, a launch site on Earth or the Moon, twenty save slots and a Photo button that saves a picture of your rocket on the pad. Undo and redo go back fifty steps. Build with a mouse or a finger, or entirely from the keyboard, and short flights make for a quick round between other things.