How do rockets get from Earth into space?

Everything starts hours earlier, with tank filling. Cryogenic propellants, such as liquid oxygen at −183 °C, are loaded shortly before liftoff to limit evaporation. During the countdown, computers check thousands of parameters; the engines ignite a few seconds before T-0, and only if all of them reach rated thrust are the clamps holding the vehicle on the pad released.

The rocket climbs vertically for a few seconds and then begins tilting eastward. Around the one-minute mark it passes the speed of sound and goes through the region of maximum aerodynamic pressure. By around two and a half minutes, at an altitude of roughly 60 to 80 km, the first stage has burned through its hundreds of tons of propellant and separates; on Falcon 9 that booster flips around and returns to land, while on most launchers it falls into the sea. The second stage ignites its engine in near-vacuum conditions, with a long nozzle designed for that environment, and shortly after, the fairing that protected the payload is jettisoned, no longer needed without air.

The second stage flies an increasingly horizontal path and gains most of the total velocity. Between eight and ten minutes after liftoff it shuts down its engine at around 7.8 km/s, and from that point the vehicle and its payload fall around Earth without touching it: that is being in orbit. To go further, to a geostationary orbit or toward the Moon, additional burns are needed, often after a coast phase lasting tens of minutes. Satellites separate, deploy panels and antennas, and the spent stage is deorbited so that it falls into an uninhabited ocean area or is left in a disposal orbit.