A million sparks lit up the glowing China sky as they celebrated with fireworks. It's amazing to think that the concept of flight in space evolved from an exploding object filled with burnt gunpowder. In 1880, people developed whaling rockets. These were rocket-propelled lances that shot into the whales, with a rope on the end. If a whaler were in trouble he would use a rocket to signal at sea. The military played around with their own kind of fire-worked rockets. It took a few physicists like a Russian named Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky, to finally suggest that we utilize rockets for interplanetary flight, by powering space vehicles.

There are solid-propellant, liquid-propellant, and hybrid forms of rockets. World War I had a fair share of rockets for signaling and firing. Robert Goddard, an American physicist began experimenting with solid-propellant rockets. Goddard designed a rocket that used smokeless powder, rather than black powder, and a convergent-divergent nozzle that helped out the engine of the rocket. Liquid propellants use liquid hydrogen. This has been labeled as the most efficient fuel. Despite its efficiency, it is known to be dangerous and difficult to employ for space shuttles. Even though maintenance has improved, scientists still have looked for other ways.

Once upon a fine day, scientists searched for the substitute of liquid oxygen. What could replace this efficient form of rocket fuel? Day after day, and night after night, scientists looked for it. Instead, low and behold, they accidentally found another more sophisticated class of liquid fuels called hypergols. What's so great about this? A hypergolic propellant doesn't need ignition, because it ignites spontaneously when the oxidizer and fuel decide to join together. Unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine has been known to be very spontaneous. The hypergolic propellant is composed of aniline or hydrazine (unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine) for fuel, and the oxidizer is nitric acid. The knowledge of solid propellants combined with liquid propellants has enabled scientists to improve their rocket technology with the creation of the hybrid. Today, scientists still seek to solve and uncover more.