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How do the Solid Rocket Boosters work? The Solid Rocket Boosters are the most powerful part of the Space Shuttle. At liftoff, they give us that extra oomph we need to get off the launch pad when the vehicle weighs the most. Each Solid Rocket Booster is composed of four solid rocket motor segments that are bolted together with 177 pins all the way around. Once you do that, you have the very large Solid Rocket Booster stack with a nose cone placed on top of that. At liftoff, there's an igniter located at the very top of the Solid Rocket Booster that shoots a flame all the way down through the middle of the booster and it begins to burn from the inside out. Not from the bottom up or the top down, but from the inside out. There's a hole down through the middle. Each Solid Rocket Booster goes from zero to three million pounds of thrust in less than half a second. At tower clear, as those boosters are helping us get off the ground, the Shuttle is going as fast as a NASCAR car is going when it is going around a track at full speed.