See also: Timeline of rocket and missile technology

The history of rocket vehicles goes back to the 13th century in China. From there developments occurred in Mongolia, India, Britain, America and Russia among many others.

Contents

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In antiquity

The availability of black powder (gunpowder) to propel projectiles was a precursor to the development of the first solid rocket. Ninth Century Chinese Taoist alchemists discovered black powder while searching for the Elixir of life; this accidental discovery led to experiments in the form of weapons such as bombs, cannon, incendiary fire arrows and rocket-propelled fire arrows.

Exactly when the first flights of rockets occurred is contested. Some say that the first recorded use of a rocket in battle was by the Chinese in 1232 against the Mongol hordes. There were reports of fire arrows and ‘iron pots’ that could be heard for 5 leagues (25 km, or 15 miles) when they exploded upon impact, causing devastation for a radius of 600 meters (2,000 feet), apparently due to shrapnel.

Less controversially, one of the earliest devices recorded that used internal-combustion rocket propulsion was the ‘ground-rat,’ a type of firework, recorded in 1264 as having frightened the Empress-Mother Kung Sheng at a feast held in her honor by her son the Emperor Lizong.

Subsequently, one of the earliest texts to mention the use of rockets was the Huolongjing, written by the Chinese artillery officer Jiao Yu in the mid-14th century. This text also mentioned the use of the first known multistage rocket, the ‘fire-dragon issuing from the water’ (huo long chu shui), used mostly by the Chinese navy. that southern China and the Laotian community rocket festivals might have been key in the subsequent spread of rocketry in the Orient.

Spread of rocket technology


Genghis Khan’s Mongols spread Chinese technology

Rocket technology first became known to Europeans following their use by the Mongols Genghis Khan and Ögedei Khan when they conquered parts of Russia, Eastern, and Central Europe. The Mongolians had acquired the Chinese technology by conquest of the northern part of China and also by the subsequent employment of Chinese rocketry experts as mercenaries for the Mongol military. Reports of the Battle of Sejo in the year 1241 describe the use of rocket-like weapons by the Mongols against the Magyars. Rocket technology also spread to Korea, with the 15th century wheeled hwacha that would launch singijeon rockets. These first Korean rockets had an amazingly long range at the time, and were designed and built by Byun Eee-Joong. They were just like arrows but had small explosives attached to the back, and were fired in swarms.

Additionally, the spread of rockets into Europe was also influenced by the Ottomans at the siege of Constantinople in 1453, although it is very likely that the Ottomans themselves were influenced by the Mongol invasions of the previous few centuries. In their history of rockets published on the Internet, NASA says “Rockets appear in Arab literature in 1258 A.D., describing Mongol invaders’ use of them on February 15 to capture the city of Baghdad. Quick to learn, the Arabs adopted the rocket into their own arms inventory and, during the Seventh Crusade, used them against the French Army of King Louis IX in 1268.”

Between 1270 and 1280, Hasan al-Rammah wrote al-furusiyyah wa al-manasib al-harbiyya (The Book of Military Horsemanship and Ingenious War Devices), which included 107 gunpowder recipes, 22 of which are for rockets; if one takes the median of 17 of these 22 compositions for rockets (75% nitrates, 9.06% sulphur and 15.94% carbon), it is almost identical with the reported ideal recipe (75% potassium nitrate, 10% sulphur, and 15% carbon).

The name Rocket comes from the Italian Rocchetta (i.e. little fuse), a name of a small firecracker created by the Italian artificer Muratori in 1379.

Between 1529 and 1556 Conrad Haas wrote a book that described the concept of multi-stage rockets.

“Artis Magnae Artilleriae pars prima” (”Great Art of Artillery, the First Part”, also known as “The Complete Art of Artillery”), first printed in Amsterdam in 1650, was translated to French in 1651, German in 1676, English and Dutch in 1729 and Polish in 1963. For over two centuries, this work of Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth nobleman Kazimierz Siemienowicz was used in Europe as a basic artillery manual. The book provided the standard designs for creating rockets, fireballs, and other pyrotechnic devices. It contained a large chapter on caliber, construction, production and properties of rockets (for both military and civil purposes), including multi-stage rockets, batteries of rockets, and rockets with delta wing stabilizers (instead of the common guiding rods).

Mysorean Rocket artillery was made from iron tubes and was used by the armies of Tipu Sultan and his father, Haidar Ali. Tipu Sultan championed the use of mass attacks with rocket brigades within the army. The effect of these weapons on the British during the Second, Third and Fourth Mysore Wars in 1792 was sufficiently impressive to inspire the British to develop their own rocket designs. Several Mysore rockets were sent to England, who then took an active interest in the technology and developed it further during the 19th century.

Accuracy of early rockets


The Congreve rocket

The major figure in the field at this time became William Congreve, son of the Comptroller of the Royal Arsenal, Woolwich, London.

Early rockets were very inaccurate. Without the use of spinning or any gimballing of the thrust, they had a strong tendency to veer sharply off course. The early British Congreve rockets reduced this somewhat by attaching a long stick to the end of a rocket (similar to modern bottle rockets) to make it harder for the rocket to change course. The largest of the Congreve rockets was the 32-pound (14.5 kg) Carcass, which had a 15-foot (4.6 m) stick. Originally, sticks were mounted on the side, but this was later changed to mounting in the center of the rocket, reducing drag and enabling the rocket to be more accurately fired from a segment of pipe.

Congreve prepared a new propellant mixture, and developed a rocket motor with a strong iron tube with conical nose, weighing about 32 pounds (14.5 kilograms). The Royal Arsenal’s first demonstration of solid fuel rockets was in 1805. The rockets were effectively used during the Napoleonic Wars and the War of 1812. Congreve published three books on rocketry.

In 1815, Alexander Dmitrievich Zasyadko began his work on creating military gunpowder rockets. He constructed rocket-launching platforms, which allowed to fire in salvos (6 rockets at a time), and gun-laying devices. Zasyadko elaborated a tactic for military use of rocket weaponry. In 1820, Zasyadko was appointed head of the Petersburg Armory, Okhtensky Powder Factory, pyrotechnic laboratory and the first Highest Artillery School in Russia. He organized rocket production in a special rocket workshop and created the first rocket sub-unit in the Russian army.

The accuracy problem was mostly solved in 1844 when William Hale modified the rocket design so that thrust was slightly vectored, causing the rocket to spin along its axis of travel like a bullet. The Hale rocket removed the need for a rocket stick, travelled further due to reduced air resistance, and was far more accurate.

Early manned rocketry

According to legend, a manned rocket sled with 47 gunpowder-filled rockets was attempted in China by Wan Hu in the 16th Century.

In Ottoman Turkey in 1633, Lagari Hasan Çelebi took off with what was described as a cone-shaped rocket, glided with wings through Bosporus from Topkapı Palace, and made a successful landing, winning him a position in the Ottoman army. The flight was accomplished as a part of celebrations performed for the birth of Ottoman Emperor Murat IV’s daughter and was rewarded by the sultan. The device was composed of a large winged cage with a conical top with 7 rockets filled with 70 kg of gunpowder. The flight was estimated to have lasted about 200 seconds and the maximum height reached around 300 metres.

Theories of interplanetary rocketry


Konstantin Tsiolkovsky published the first work on space travel

In 1903, high school mathematics teacher Konstantin Tsiolkovsky (1857–1935) published Исследование мировых пространств реактивными приборами). He also advocated the use of liquid hydrogen and oxygen as fuel, calculating their maximum exhaust velocity. His work was essentially unknown outside the Soviet Union, but inside the country it inspired further research, experimentation and the formation of the Society for Studies of Interplanetary Travel in 1924.

In 1912, Robert Esnault-Pelterie published a lecture on rocket theory and interplanetary travel. He independently derived Tsiolkovsky’s rocket equation, did basic calculations about the energy required to make round trips to the Moon and planets, and he proposed the use of atomic power (i.e. Radium) to power a jet drive.


Robert Goddard

Robert Goddard began a serious analysis of rockets in 1912, concluding that conventional solid-fuel rockets needed to be improved in three ways. First, fuel should be burned in a small combustion chamber, instead of building the entire propellant container to withstand the high pressures. Second, rockets could be arranged in stages. And third, the exhaust speed (and thus the efficiency) could be greatly increased to beyond the speed of sound by using a De Laval nozzle. He patented these concepts in 1914. He, also, independently developed the mathematics of rocket flight. He proved that a rocket would work in a vacuum, which many scientists did not believe at the time.

In 1920, Goddard published these ideas and experimental results in A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes.

Goddard’s historical impact was diminished by the fact that he worked much in secret, though he offered his services to the military but was mostly ignored. This secrecy was prompted in part by his bad experience with the press and in part by his belief that his ideas were being plagiarized by foreign scientists. He was also in bad health and did not want to waste time helping amateurs and arguing with other scientists who did not understand this new science.

In 1923, Hermann Oberth (1894–1989) published Die Rakete zu den Planetenräumen (”The Rocket into Planetary Space”), a version of his doctoral thesis, after the University of Munich rejected it.

In 1924, Tsiolkovsky also wrote about multi-stage rockets, in ‘Cosmic Rocket Trains’

Modern rocketry

Pre-World War II


Robert Goddard and the first liquid-fueled rocket.

Modern rockets were born when Goddard attached a supersonic (de Laval) nozzle to a liquid-fueled rocket engine’s combustion chamber. These nozzles turn the hot gas from the combustion chamber into a cooler, hypersonic, highly directed jet of gas, more than doubling the thrust and raising the engine efficiency from 2% to 64%. Early rockets had been grossly inefficient because of the thermal energy that was wasted in the exhaust gases. In 1926, Robert Goddard launched the world’s first liquid-fueled rocket in Auburn, Massachusetts.


Hermann Oberth (in front) with fellow ABMA employees. Left to right: Dr. Ernst Stuhlinger, Major General Holger Toftoy, Oberth, Dr. Wernher von Braun, and Dr. Robert Lusser.

During the 1920s, a number of rocket research organizations appeared in the United States, Austria, Britain, Czechoslovakia, France, Italy, Germany, and Russia. In the mid-1920s, German scientists had begun experimenting with rockets which used liquid propellants capable of reaching relatively high altitudes and distances. 1927 the German car manufacturer Opel began to research with rockets together with Mark Valier and the rocket builder Friedrich Wilhelm Sander. In 1928, Fritz von Opel drove with a rocket car, the Opel RAK1 on the Opel raceway in Rüsselsheim, Germany. In 1929 von Opel started at the Frankfurt-Rebstock airport with the Opel-Sander RAK 1-airplane. This was maybe the first flight with a manned rocket-aircraft. In 1927 and also in Germany, a team of amateur rocket engineers had formed the Verein für Raumschiffahrt (German Rocket Society, or VfR), and in 1931 launched a liquid propellant rocket (using oxygen and gasoline).

From 1931 to 1937, the most extensive scientific work on rocket engine design occurred in Leningrad, at the Gas Dynamics Laboratory. Well-funded and staffed, over 100 experimental engines were built under the direction of Valentin Glushko. The work included regenerative cooling, hypergolic propellant ignition, and fuel injector designs that included swirling and bi-propellant mixing injectors. However, the work was curtailed by Glushko’s arrest during Stalinist purges in 1938. Similar work was also done by the Austrian professor Eugen Sänger who worked on rocket powered spaceplanes such as Silbervogel (sometimes called the ‘antipodal’ bomber.)

On November 12, 1932 at a farm in Stockton NJ, the American Interplanetary Society’s attempt to static fire their first rocket (based on German Rocket Society designs) fails in a fire.

In 1932, the Reichswehr (which in 1935 became the Wehrmacht) began to take an interest in rocketry. Artillery restrictions imposed by the Treaty of Versailles limited Germany’s access to long distance weaponry. Seeing the possibility of using rockets as long-range artillery fire, the Wehrmacht initially funded the VfR team, but seeing that their focus was strictly scientific, created its own research team. At the behest of military leaders, Wernher von Braun, at the time a young aspiring rocket scientist, joined the military (followed by two former VfR members) and developed long-range weapons for use in World War II by Nazi Germany, notably the A-series of rockets, which led to the infamous V-2 rocket (initially called A4).

World War II


A German V-2 rocket on a Meillerwagen.


Layout of a V2 rocket

In 1943, production of the V-2 rocket began. The V-2 had an operational range of 300 km (185 miles) and carried a 1000 kg (2204 lb) warhead, with an amatol explosive charge. Highest point of altitude of its flight trajectory is 90 km. The vehicle was only different in details from most modern rockets, with turbopumps, inertial guidance and many other features. Thousands were fired at various Allied nations, mainly England, as well as Belgium and France. While they could not be intercepted, their guidance system design and single conventional warhead meant that the V-2 was insufficiently accurate against military targets. The later versions however, were more accurate, sometimes within metres, and could be devastating. 2,754 people in England were killed, and 6,523 were wounded before the launch campaign was terminated. While the V-2 did not significantly affect the course of the war, it provided a lethal demonstration of the potential for guided rockets as weapons.

Under Projekt Amerika Nazi Germany also tried to develop and use the first submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBMs) and the first intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) A9/A10 Amerika-Raketen to bomb New York and other American cities. The tests of SLBM-variants of the A4 rocket was achieved with U-boat submarines towing launch platforms. The second stage of the A9/A10 rocket was tested a few times in January, February and March 1945.

In parallel with the guided missile programme in Nazi Germany, rockets were also being used for aircraft, either for rapid horizontal take-off (JATO) or for powering the aircraft (Me 163,etc) and for vertical take-off (Bachem Ba 349 “Natter”).

Post World War II


Dornberger and Von Braun after being captured by the Allies

At the end of World War II, competing Russian, British, and U.S. military and scientific crews raced to capture technology and trained personnel from the German rocket program at Peenemünde. Russia and Britain had some success, but the United States benefited the most. The US captured a large number of German rocket scientists (many of whom were members of the Nazi Party, including von Braun) and brought them to the United States as part of Operation Paperclip.

After the war, rockets were used to study high-altitude conditions, by radio telemetry of temperature and pressure of the atmosphere, detection of cosmic rays, and further research; notably for the Bell X-1 to break the sound barrier. This continued in the U.S. under von Braun and the others, who were destined to become part of the U.S. scientific complex.


R-7 8K72 “Vostok”

Independently, research continued in the Soviet Union under the leadership of the chief designer Sergei Korolev. The R-7 launched the first satellite- Sputnik, and later Yuri Gagarin-the first man into space, and the first lunar and planetary probes. This rocket is still in use today. These epoch marking events attracted the attention of top politicians, along with more money for further research.

Rockets became extremely important militarily in the form of modern intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) when it was realised that nuclear weapons carried on a rocket vehicle were essentially not defensible against once launched, and ICBM/Launch vehicles such as the R-7, Atlas and Titan became the delivery platform of choice for these weapons.


The Apollo 10 Command Module in orbit around the moon

Fueled partly by the Cold War, the 1960s became the decade of rapid development of rocket technology particularly in the Soviet Union (Vostok, Soyuz, Proton) and in the United States (e.g. the X-15 aircraft). There was also significant research in other countries, such as Britain, Japan, Australia, etc. and their growing use for Space exploration, with pictures returned from the far side of the Moon and unmanned flights for Mars exploration.

In America the manned programmes, Project Mercury, Project Gemini and later the Apollo programme culminated in 1969 with the first manned landing on the moon via the Saturn V, causing the New York Times to retract their earlier editorial implying that spaceflight couldn’t work:

“Further investigation and experimentation have confirmed the findings of Isaac Newton in the 17th century and it is now definitely established that a rocket can function in a vacuum as well as in an atmosphere. The Times regrets the error.”

In the 1970s America made further lunar landings, before abandoning the Apollo launch vehicle. The replacement vehicle, the partially reusable ‘Space Shuttle’ was intended to be cheaper, but this large reduction in costs was largely not achieved. Meanwhile in 1973, the expendable Ariane programme was begun, a launcher that by the year 2000 would capture much of the geosat market.

Current day

Rockets remain a popular military weapon. The use of large battlefield rockets of the V-2 type has given way to guided missiles. However rockets are often used by helicopters and light aircraft for ground attack, being more powerful than machine guns, but without the recoil of a heavy cannon and In the 1950s there was a brief vogue for air-to-air rockets, ending with the AIR-2 ‘Genie’ nuclear rocket, but by the early 1960s these had largely been abandoned in favor of air-to-air missiles. Current artillery systems as MLRS or Smerch launch multiple rockets to saturate battlefield targets with munitions.


SpaceShipOne

Economically, rocketry is the enabler of all space technologies particularly satellites, many of which impact people’s everyday lives in almost countless ways, satellite navigation, communications satellites and even things as simple as weather satellites.

Scientifically, rocketry has opened a window on our universe, allowing the launch of space probes to explore our solar system, satellites to view the Earth itself, and space-based telescopes to obtain a clearer view of the rest of the universe.

However, in the minds of much of the public, the most important use of rockets is perhaps manned spaceflight. Vehicles such as the Space Shuttle for scientific research, the Soyuz for orbital tourism and SpaceShipOne for suborbital tourism may show a trend towards greater commercialisation of manned rocketry, away from government funding, and towards more widespread access to space.

See also

  • Rocket
  • Rocket engine
  • Jet aircraft

References

  1. ^ A Brief History of Rocketry
  2. ^ （正大九年）其守城之具有火砲名「震天雷」者，铁罐盛药，以火点之，砲起火发，其声如雷，闻百里外，所爇围半亩之上，火点著甲铁皆透。（蒙古）大兵又为牛皮洞，直至城下，掘城为龛，间可容人，则城上不可奈何矣。人有献策者，以铁绳悬「震天雷」者，顺城而下，至掘处火发，人与牛皮皆碎迸无迹。又「飞火枪」，注药以火发之，辄前烧十余步，人亦不敢近。（蒙古）大兵惟畏此二物云。(Rough Translation: soldiers only terrify by these two objects.) History of Jin ch. 113
  3. ^ Crosby, Alfred W. (2002). Throwing Fire: Projectile Technology Through History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 100–103. ISBN 0521791588. 
  4. ^ Needham, Volume 5, Part 7, 510.
  5. ^ Frank H. Winter, “The `Boun Bang Fai’ Rockets of Thailand and Laos:,” in Lloyd H. Cornett, Jr., ed., History of Rocketry and Astronautics – Proceedings of the Twentieth and Twenty-First History Symposia of the International Academy of Astronautics, AAS History Series, Vol. 15 (Univelt Inc.: San Diego, 1993), pp. 3-24.
  6. ^ a b “NASA Spacelink – “A brief history of rocketry”". Retrieved on 2006-08-19.
  7. ^ Hassan, Ahmad Y. “Gunpowder Composition for Rockets and Cannon in Arabic Military Treatises In Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries”. History of Science and Technology in Islam. Retrieved on 2008-03-29. ”The book contains 107 recipes for gunpowder. There are 22 recipes for rockets (tayyarat, sing. tayyar). Among the remaining compositions some are for military uses and some are for fireworks. The gunpowder composition of seventeen rockets is shown in the following table. Five rockets are not included because their ingredients included other materials….It is reported by Hall that most authorities regard 75 percent potassium nitrate, 10 percent sulphur, and 15 percent carbon to be the best recipe. Al-Rammah’s median composition for 17 rockets is 75 nitrates, 9.06 sulphur and 15.94 carbon which is almost identical with the reported best recipe.”
  8. ^ Hassan, Ahmad Y. “Transfer Of Islamic Technology To The West, Part III: Technology Transfer in the Chemical Industries”. History of Science and Technology in Islam. Retrieved on 2008-03-29.
  9. ^ Arslan Terzioglu (2007), The First Attempts of Flight, Automatic Machines, Submarines and Rocket Technology in Turkish History, in H. C. Guzel (ed.), The Turks, pp. 804-10
  10. ^ Von Braun, Wernher & Frederick I. Ordway, III. HISTORY OF ROCKETRY AND SPACE TRAVEL, 1966
  11. ^ Tadeusz Nowak “Kazimierz Siemienowicz, ca.1600-ca.1651“, MON Press, Warsaw 1969, p.182
  12. ^ a b Stephen Leslie (1887) Dictionary of National Biography, Vol.XII, p.9, Macmillan & Co., New York Congreve, Sir William,
  13. ^ British Rockets at the US National Parks Service, Fort McHenry National Monument and Historic Shrine. Accessed February 2008.
  14. ^ History of the Rocket – 1804 to 1815 by Gareth Glover
  15. ^ Rockets and Missiles By A. Bowdoin Van Riper
  16. ^ Marine Corps Artillery Rockets: Back Through The Future
  17. ^ “Smithsonian article on Hale rockets”.
  18. ^ a b Rockets and Jets by American author Herbert S. Zim in 1945
  19. ^ Winter, Frank H. (1992). “Who First Flew in a Rocket?”, Journal of the British Interplanetary Society 45 (July 1992), p. 275-80
  20. ^ Tsiolkovsky’s Исследование мировых пространств реактивными приборами – The Exploration of Cosmic Space by Means of Reaction Devices (Russian paper)
  21. ^ Johnson W., “Contents and commentary on William Moore’s a treatise on the motion of rockets and an essay on naval gunnery”, International Journal of Impact Engineering, Volume 16, Number 3, June 1995, pp. 499-521
  22. ^ US patent US001102653
  23. ^ A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes- Goddard 1919
  24. ^ “Topics of the Times”, New York Times (January 13, 1920). Retrieved on 21 June 2007. ”As a method of sending a missile to the higher, and even highest, part of the earth’s atmospheric envelope, Professor Goddard’s multiple-charge rocket is a practicable, and therefore promising device. Such a rocket, too, might carry self-recording instruments, to be released at the limit of its flight, and conceivable parachutes would bring them safely to the ground. It is not obvious, however, that the instruments would return to the point of departure; indeed, it is obvious that they would not, for parachutes drift exactly as balloons do. And the rocket, or what was left of it after the last explosion, would have to be aimed with amazing skill, and in dead calm, to fall on the spot where it started.” 
  25. ^ Lehman, Milton, This High Man. New York: Farrar, Straus and Company, 1963
  26. ^ (Romanian) Jürgen Heinz Ianzer, Hermann Oberth, pǎrintele zborului cosmic (”Hermann Oberth, Father of the Cosmic Flight”), p. 3, 11, 13, 15.
  27. ^ Konstantin Tsiolkovsky – Rockets from Russia
  28. ^ Goddard, Robert H., Rockets , pp. 2, 15.
  29. ^ Clary, David A., Rocket Man: Robert H. Goddard and the Birth of the Space Age , pp. 44-45.
  30. ^ HISTORY OF ROCKETRY: Verein für Raumschiffahrt (VfR)
  31. ^ A Rocket Drive For Long Range Bombers by E. Saenger and J. Bredt, August 1944
  32. ^ van der Linden, Frank H (November 2007), “Out of the Past”, Aerospace America: p39 
  33. ^ The V-2 ballistic missile
  34. ^ A4/V2 Mobile Firing Operations 1944-45
  35. ^ A9/A10
  36. ^ Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency. U.S. National Archives and Records Administration
  37. ^ von Braun, Wernher. The Redstone, Jupiter and Juno. Technology and Culture, Vol. 4, No. 4, The History of Rocket Technology (Autumn 1963), pp. 452-465.
  38. ^ International Space Hall of Fame: Sergei Korolev
  39. ^ “Rocket R-7″. S.P.Korolev RSC Energia.
  40. ^ (PDF) Hypersonics Before the Shuttle: A Concise History of the X-15 Research Airplane (NASA SP-2000-4518, 2000)
  41. ^ Houchin, Roy (2006). U.S. Hypersonic Research and Development: The Rise and Fall of Dyna-Soar, 1944–1963. New York: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-36281-4. 
  42. ^ New York Times 17 June 1969 – A Correction
  43. ^ General Accounting Office. Cost Benefit Analysis Used in Support of the Space Shuttle Program. Washington, DC: General Accounting Office, 1972.
  44. ^ Mcdonnell Douglas AIR-2A “Genie” rocket
  45. ^ GLOBAL POSITIONING SYSTEMS WING
  46. ^ NASA’s great observatories
  47. ^ Futron report

Retrieved from “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_rockets”
Categories: History by topic | Rocketry


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