Today’s rockets are remarkable collections
of Thuman ingenuity that have their roots
in the science and technology of the past.
They are
natural outgrowths of literally thousands
of years of
experimentation and research on rockets and
rocket
propulsion.
One of the first devices to successfully
employ the principles essential to rocket
flight was a
wooden bird.
The writings of Aulus Gellius, a
Roman, tell a story of a Greek named Archytas
who
lived in the city of Tarentum, now a part
of southern
Italy.
Somewhere around the year 400 B.C.,
Archytas mystified and amused the citizens
of
Tarentum by flying a pigeon made of wood.
Escaping steam propelled the bird suspended
on
wires.
The pigeon used the action-reaction
principle, which was not to be stated as a
scientific
law until the 17th century.
About three hundred years after the pigeon,
another Greek, Hero of Alexandria, invented
a
similar rocket-like device called an aeolipile.
It,
too, used steam as a propulsive gas.
Hero
mounted a sphere on top of a water kettle.
A fire below the kettle turned the water into
steam, and the gas traveled through pipes
to the sphere.
Two L-shaped tubes on
opposite sides of the sphere allowed the gas
to escape, and in doing so gave a thrust to
the
sphere that caused it to rotate.
Just when the first true rockets appeared
is
unclear.
Stories of early rocket-like devices appear
sporadically through the historical records
of various
cultures.
Perhaps the first true rockets were
accidents.
In the first century A.D., the
Chinese reportedly had a simple form of
gunpowder made from saltpeter, sulfur, and
charcoal dust.
They used the gunpowder
mostly for fireworks in religious and other
festive celebrations.
To create explosions
during religious festivals, they filled bamboo
tubes
with the mixture and tossed them into fires.
Perhaps some of those tubes failed to explode
and
instead skittered out of the fires, propelled
by the
gases and sparks produced from the burning
gunpowder.
The Chinese began experimenting with the
gunpowder-filled tubes.
At some point, they
attached bamboo tubes to arrows and launched
them with bows.
Soon they discovered that
these gunpowder tubes could launch
themselves just by the power produced
from the escaping gas.
The true rocket was
The date reporting the first use of true
rockets was in 1232.
At this time, the Chinese and
the Mongols were at war with each other.
During
the battle of Kai-Keng, the Chinese repelled
the
Mongol invaders by a barrage of “arrows
of flying
fire.”
These fire-arrows were a simple form of a
solid-propellant rocket.
A tube, capped at one end,
contained gunpowder.
The other end was left open
and the tube was attached to a long stick.
When
the powder ignited, the rapid burning of the
powder
produced fire, smoke, and gas that escaped
out the
open end and produced a thrust.
The stick acted as
By the 16th century rockets fell into a time
of
disuse as weapons of war, though they were
still
used for fireworks displays, and a German
fireworks
maker, Johann Schmidlap, invented the “step
rocket,” a multi-staged vehicle for lifting
fireworks to
higher altitudes.
A large sky rocket (first stage)
carried a smaller sky rocket (second stage).
When
the large rocket burned out, the smaller one
continued to a higher altitude before showering
the
sky with glowing cinders.
Schmidlap’s idea is basic
to all rockets today that go into outer space.
Nearly all uses of rockets up to this time
were for warfare or fireworks, but an interesting
old
Chinese legend reports the use of rockets
as a
means of transportation.
With the help of many
a simple guidance system that kept the rocket
headed in one general direction as it flew
through
the air.
How effective these arrows of flying fire
were as weapons of destruction is not clear,
but
their psychological effects on the Mongols
must
have been formidable.
Following the battle of Kai-Keng, the
Mongols produced rockets of their own and
may
have been responsible for the spread of rockets
to
Europe.
Many records describe rocket experiments
through out the 13th to the 15th centuries.
In
England, a monk named Roger Bacon worked on
improved forms of gunpowder that greatly increased
the range of rockets.
In France, Jean Froissart
achieved more accurate flights by launching
rockets
through tubes.
Froissart’s idea was the forerunner
of the modern bazooka.
Joanes de Fontana of Italy
designed a surface-running rocket-powered
torpedo
for setting enemy ships on fire.
assistants, a lesser-known Chinese official
named
Wan-Hu assembled a rocket-powered flying chair.
He had two large kites attached to the chair,
and
fixed to the kites were forty-seven fire-arrow
rockets.
On the day of the flight, Wan-Hu sat himself
on the chair and gave the command to light
the
rockets.
Forty-seven rocket assistants, each armed
with torches, rushed forward to light the
fuses.
A
tremendous roar filled the air, accompanied
by
billowing clouds of smoke.
When the smoke
cleared, Wan-Hu and his flying chair were
gone.
No
one knows for sure what happened to Wan-Hu,
but
if the event really did take place, Wan-Hu
and his
chair probably did not survive the explosion.
Firearrows
were as apt to explode as to fly.
Rocketry Becomes a Science
During the latter part of the 17th century,
the
great English scientist Sir Isaac Newton (1642-
1727) laid the scientific foundations for
modern
rocketry.
Newton organized his understanding of
physical motion into three scientific laws.
The laws
explain how rockets work and why they are
able to
work in the vacuum of outer space.
Newton’s laws soon began to have a
practical impact on the design of rockets.
About
1720, a Dutch professor, Willem Gravesande,
built
model cars propelled by jets of steam.
Rocket
experimenters in Germany and Russia began
working with rockets with a mass of more than
45
kilograms.
Some of these rockets were so powerful
that their escaping exhaust flames bored deep
holes in the ground even before liftoff.
During the end of the 18th century and early
into the 19th, rockets experienced a brief
revival as
a weapon of war.
The success of Indian rocket
barrages against the British in 1792 and again
in
1799 caught the interest of an artillery expert,
Colonel William Congreve.
Congreve set out to
design rockets for use by the British military.
The Congreve rockets were highly
successful in battle.
Used by British ships to pound
Fort McHenry in the War of 1812, they inspired
Francis Scott Key to write “the rockets’
red glare,” in
his poem that later became The Star-Spangled
Banner.
Even with Congreve’s work, the accuracy
of
rockets still had not improved much from the
early
days.
The devastating nature of war rockets was
not their accuracy or power, but their numbers.
During a typical siege, thousands of them
might be
fired at the enemy.
All over the world, rocket
researchers experimented with ways to improve
accuracy.
An Englishman, William Hale, developed
a technique called spin stabilization.
In this method,
the escaping exhaust gases struck small vanes
at
the bottom of the rocket, causing it to spin
much as
a bullet does in flight.
Many rockets still use
variations of this principle today.
Rocket use continued to be successful in
battles all over the European continent.
However, in a war with Prussia, the
Austrian rocket brigades met their match against
newly designed artillery pieces.
Breech-loading
cannon with rifled barrels and exploding warheads
were far more effective weapons of war than
the
best rockets.
Once again, the military relegated
rocketry to peacetime uses.
