Rockets: Soar and Explore

Ancient Rocketry

It is believed that around the year 600 B.C. the Chinese had mastered the art of using gunpowder. The Chinese first demonstrated the explosiveness of gunpowder through the lighting and detonation of firecrackers. There are not written records of when they were introduced, but fire arrows launched by gunpowder are recognized as the first true rockets. These were regular arrows that were propelled by ignited gunpowder housed in a tube, which was tied to the arrow itself. The Chinese would fire these in salvos from an assortment of boxes and cylinders, and some of them could hold as many as 1,000 fire arrows each!

Throughout the 13^th and 15^th centuries, European countries experimented with rockets. In England, a monk named Roger Bacon had improved the forms of gunpowder, which greatly increased the range of rockets. In France, a man named Jean Froissart had discovered that rockets flew more accurately if fired from a tube. His idea later became the stepping-stone for the bazooka.

Beginning of Modern Rocketry

Modern history of rockets began in 1898, when a Russian schoolteacher, Konstatin Tsiolovsky (1857-1935), proposed the exploration of space by rocket. In 1903, he suggested that the use of liquid propellants would help make the rocket achieve greater range. He also said that the speed and range of a rocket were bound by the amount of escape velocity of the escaping gas. After Tsiolovsky’s great vision and ideas, he is now considered the father of modern astronautics.

Early in the 20^th century, an American, Robert H. Goddard (1882-1945), conducted practical experiments in rocketry. With these experiments he found a greater interest in achieving higher altitudes for rockets, and proposed that it was possible with lighter-than-air balloons. While he was working with solid-propelled rockets, he discovered that it would help make the rocket fly farther if the rocket were powered by a liquid-propellant. In his time, it was extremely difficult because items such as fuel and oxygen tanks, turbines, and combustion chambers were needed. However, he successfully tested the first liquid-propellant rocket on March 16, 1926.

A third space pioneer, Herman Oberth (1894-1989) of Germany, had published a book in 1923 about rocket travel in outer space. It was extremely important because with his publishing countless small rocket societies sprang up around Germany. In 1937, in Peenemunde, German scientists and engineers, including Oberth, would assemble and fly the most advanced rockets of the time, all under the leadership of Wernher von Braun. It was here where the V-2 rocket was invented. These rockets were fired at London, but introduced too late in World War II to make any differences.

The Space Age and Modern Rocketry

With the end of Nazi Germany, many of the German engineers and scientists, including von Braun, went to either the US or the Soviet Union. At first, the US began with a program that involved the development of high-altitude atmospheric sounding rockets, which was one of Goddard’s early ideas. Later, the US worked on medium and long-range intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM). These are known as the starting point of the United States space program. It is with these ideas that the Redstone Atlas and the Titan would later emerge and later send astronauts into space.

On October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the first satellite ever to successfully enter space. With this achievement, the US and the Soviet Union started the “Space Race”. A month after Sputnik was launched, the Soviets fired a satellite that carried a dog named Laika. Laika had survived seven days in space before being put to sleep because of low oxygen supply. A few months after Sputnik was launched, the U.S. Army launched the Explorer I on January 31, 1958. In that same year in October, the US had formally established the Nation Aeronautics and Space Organization (NASA). This is a civilian agency with the goal of peaceful space exploration. It is still in existence today.

With these great achievements, men and machines were being sent into space, onto the moon, and satellites were being launched into the far reaches of space. Satellites today can transfer information in a heartbeat, tell us about the weather, and give us detailed photos from over 50 miles up in the sky. Another achievement is the advancement of military and civilian rockets. As the demand for larger payloads augmented, more versatile and powerful rockets were built.

Today, space exploration is still an essential part of our lives. We gather intelligence about Earth everyday, as well as other planets and galaxies. It is only a matter of time until we settle on other planets, both in the Milky Way and additional, distant galaxies, all with the fascination of the rocket, which was started over 2000 years ago.