A nose cone that contained one of the Voyager spacecraft is seen here as it is mounted on top of a Titan III/Centaur launch vehicle.

The term nose cone is usually used to refer to the forwardmost, usually separable section of a rocket or guided missile that is shaped to offer minimum aerodynamic resistance. Nose cones are also designed for travel in and under water and in high speed land vehicles. Image File history File links A nose cone that contained one of the Voyager spacecraft is seen here as it is mounted on top of a Titan III/Centaur launch vehicle. ... Image File history File links A nose cone that contained one of the Voyager spacecraft is seen here as it is mounted on top of a Titan III/Centaur launch vehicle. ... A Redstone rocket, part of the Mercury program A rocket is a vehicle, missile or aircraft which obtains thrust by the reaction to the ejection of fast moving exhaust gas from within a rocket engine. ... A missile (British English: miss-isle; U.S. English: missl) is, in general, a projectile—that is, something thrown or otherwise propelled. ... Aerodynamics is a branch of fluid dynamics concerned with the study of gas flows, first analysed by George Cayley in the 1800s. ...

On a rocket vehicle it consists of a chamber or chambers in which a satellite, instruments, animals, plants, or auxiliary equipment may be carried, and an outer surface built to withstand high temperatures generated by aerodynamic heating. In a satellite vehicle, the nose cone may become the satellite itself after separating from the final stage of the rocket or it may be used to shield the satellite until orbital speed is accomplished, then separating from the satellite. Aerodynamic heating is the heating of a solid body produced by passage of air or other gases over the body. ... A satellite is an object that orbits another object (known as its primary). ... The second stage of a Minuteman III rocket Description A multistage (or multi-stage) rocket is, like any rocket, propelled by the recoil pressure of the burning gases it emits as it burns fuel. ...

When building a nose cone, the main problem is determining the shape. It requires a solid of revolution that experiences minimal resistance to rapid motion through a medium consisting of elastic particles. See the article on nose cone design which contains possible shapes and formulas. In mathematics, engineering, and manufacturing, a solid of revolution is a solid figure obtained by rotating a plane figure around some straight line (the axis) that lies on the same plane. ...