Quick Questions, Short Answers - No Debate

Almost. Change the "nothing" to "everything" and you've got it This is a classic case of taking the debunking of a fallacy too far. The original fallacy is thinking that the exhaust gases push against the ground at take off, generating the upward thrust. But in dismissing this erroneous idea, the correct situation of the exhaust gases interacting with the walls of the combustion chamber seems to have been dismissed as well.The obvious picture to visualise is a small rocket sat in zero-g inside the combustion chamber of a much larger rocket. The small rocket fires. Observed from a distance, the large rocket will seen to be expelling exhaust gases, yet will not move. It will only accelerate once the small rocket impacts on the larger combustion chamber.

Essentially, yes. There will also be some propulsion from the impact of the combustion gases on the rear of the ship. Think of the Orion spacecraft design, which ejects H-bombs out the rear, detonates them, and rides the shock-wave.

It's not a shock-wave but a "shock-wave" The interplanetary gases are too tenuous to be of interest here, so we are merely looking at the constituents of the bomb flying apart and imparting their kinetic energy to the back of the Orion blast plate. So I guess it makes sense to surround each bomb with a decent amount of "working fluid" that can transmit the explosion energy to the space-craft.We do get real shock-waves in space: the termination shock in the heliosphere being an obvious one, where the solar wind is impacting the interstellar medium.

2 hours ahead of the South Pole, so it can't be too hard to work it out...