rocket ship

• rocket-ship

From 1809.

rocket ship (plural rocket ships)

1. A spacecraft propelled by a rocket engine.
   • 2026 April 9, Ariel Edwards-Levy, “Would you go to the moon? Board an alien spacecraft? What nearly 80 years of polls say about US attitudes on space”, in CNN‎^[1], archived from the original on 11 April 2026:

     In a Gallup poll conducted near the start of 1955, just 9% said they’d like to go along on the first rocket ship to the moon if asked, and two years later, just 5% said they’d volunteer to be the first one up in a spacecraft.

2. A ship armed with rockets.
   • 1837, William James, The Naval History of Great Britain, From the Declaration of War by France in 1793, to the Accession of George IV, volume 6, London: Richard Bentley, page 320:

     At about 3 P.M., the four bomb-vessels and rocket-ship weighed, and stood further in; the latter, to give effect to her rockets, much nearer than the others.

   • 2006, Norman Davies, No simple victory: World War II in Europe, 1939–1945, New York: Penguin, page 447:

     And there was a further group, including Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–80), who had been a POW in Germany, and William Golding (1911–93), who had commanded a Royal Navy rocket ship, who were propelled by the ordeals of war to examine the complexities of human nature and human society.