Modern launch vehicles, including the recently retired space shuttle and the earlier Saturn V that took the first humans to the Moon, are among the most complex feats of engineering in human history. In the case of the Saturn V, the vehicle was longer than a football field and comprised of some 5,600,000 separate parts, all of which had to work perfectly to enable the rocket to carry out its mission. However, a large part of the complexity of the Apollo missions was in the extremely precise computerized sequencing of almost every mechanical, electrical, and other technical event throughout each mission in order to achieve the planned accuracies of soft landings on the surface of the Moon. The Apollo and space shuttle programs thus required multiple inventions, along with the modern management tools of systems and human factors engineering, to be successful. Of these multiple inventions, the basic rocket is undoubtedly the oldest: but was it really an invention?
At 9:32 a.m. EDT, the swing arms move away and a plume of flame signals the liftoff of the Apollo 11 Saturn V space vehicle and astronauts Neil A. Armstrong, Michael Collins and Edwin E. Aldrin, Jr. from Kennedy Space Center Launch Complex 39A.
A closer examination of the earliest history of the basic rocket, a gunpowder-propelled device developed in China around 900 years ago, suggests that it originated as an accidental discovery rather than as a deliberately planned invention. Although we still do not know who first made the rocket, nor when nor how it was devised, there has been a long-held and commonly accepted belief that it originated in China during the Sung Dynasty (960 – 1279 AD).
In determining the earliest reference to rocket devices in Chinese (or other) sources, investigators must be cautious in correctly interpreting early Chinese terminology, which can be ambiguous, or refer to changing technologies over time.
The use of “fei huo tsiang” by the Chinese against the Mongols during the siege of Kai-fung-fu in 1232 is often cited by historians as the first appearance of the rocket or, more particularly, the ”war rocket.“ But fie huo tsiang literally means “flying fire lances” and could have been no more than hand-thrown lances or spears with burning heads. To identify a true rocket-propelled device in the early texts, it must be unequivocally described as operating solely by self-propulsion. The question therefore has to be: Is the device clearly described as flying or moving by itself, either in the air or on the ground, without any assistance from a man or another device (like a bow or throwing stick)? Self-propulsion should be the only rigidly held criterion.
Using this standard, it is likely that the first rockets were not used in war, but rather as a form of entertainment. Descriptions of a simple type of firework are found in the Ch’in yeh-yu (Rustic Tales in Eastern Ch’i) by Chou Mi, dated to 1264. Called “ground rat” (ti lao shu) or “earth rat,” the device described is a self-propelled, ground-crawling firework. It was simply a tube, “probably of bamboo, filled with gunpowder and having a small orifice through which the gases could escape; then when lit, it shot about in all directions on the floor at firework displays.” According to Dr. Joseph Needham, author of Science & Civilization in China, The “ground rat” type of firework “may well have been the origin of rocket propulsion.”
The Origins of Gunpowder
Gunpowder was discovered in China by Taoist alchemists, or religious philosophers who were employed by the emperor to search for an “elixir of longevity.” Needham and his colleagues found early accounts of the haphazard practice of the Taoist alchemists in which they occasionally had their beards singed, hands and faces burnt, and even the houses where they worked burned down when they ignited certain mixtures. These accidents suggest that, in their pursuit of life-prolonging medicines, they eventually stumbled upon the explosive concoction of gunpowder unintentionally.
For hundreds of years, and well into the 17th century, the traditional Chinese Taoist alchemical interpretation of the explosive property of gunpowder was regarded as the interaction of yin (female) and yang (male) values, a belief entirely in accord with the principles and practice of Taoism. Based upon this philosophy, it seems highly improbable that the essential ingredients of saltpeter, sulfur, and charcoal were deliberately brought together as a planned invention to form gunpowder, since the true chemical reaction of these ingredients upon ignition was hardly predictable.
Similarly, it was highly unlikely that the early Chinese “invented” the rocket from well-founded scientific principles. Rather, the ancient Chinese alchemists (by the 11th century), seeking an elixir for longevity, very likely “witnessed” the accidental discovery of the explosion of a proto-gunpowder. After continuous trial-and-error experiments, possibly over centuries, these alchemists arrived at true gunpowder and these empirical experiments may have further led to the accidental discovery of the rocket, perhaps when gunpowder was placed in a container, with one end closed: when accidentally lit, the container unexpectedly flew off by itself, due to what we would today explain as Newton’s Third Law of Motion: “For every action, there is an opposite and equal reaction.”
Nonetheless, the Chinese continued their empirical experimentation, once the basic rocket had been “found” and were able to improve upon them, as well as upon fireworks and gunpowder weapons that eventually led to guns. The rocket also evolved thereafter in a purely empirical way, as did virtually all technologies before the Scientific Revolution began to produce an effective theory that could be applied to the process of invention.
As for the Taoist alchemists, the elusive elixir of longevity was never found, but their work lives on in multiple ways. For those who are shooting off fireworks this Fourth of July or just watching them on television via a satellite that was placed into orbit by a modern rocket, their accidental discovery endures today.
Fireworks and the full Moon on July 4th, 2012. Composite image.
Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum
The first rocket was invented around 1100 AD in China. These rockets used solid propellants and were mainly used as weapons and fireworks. It was not until the 1920s that rocket societies emerged, and by the 1930s and 1940s professional rocket engineering took off. Three pioneers began working independently on developing rockets to reach space. Konstantin Tsiolkovsky and Hermann Oberth were the first to work out many essential principles and to realize the rocket was the means to travel into space. This sparked interests in rocketry and space travel. In 1926, Robert Goddard launched the world’s first liquid-propellant rocket. Due to secrecy, the 1926 rocket did not have much influence on the later developments. The first long range ballistic missile was the V-2, which was built by the Germans in 1942 and was used against allied cities during World War II. The US and the USSR used the V-2 as a basis for developing their own large rockets. Later these intercontinental ballistic missiles were modified to launch spacecraft and astronauts in to space.
Posted on February 11, 2012 at 11:55 am
The first man to give hope to dreams of space travel is American Robert H. Goddard, who successfully launches the world’s first liquid-fueled rocket at Auburn, Massachusetts, on March 16, 1926. The rocket traveled for 2.5 seconds at a speed of about 60 mph, reaching an altitude of 41 feet and landing 184 feet away. The rocket was 10 feet tall, constructed out of thin pipes, and was fueled by liquid oxygen and gasoline.
The Chinese developed the first military rockets in the early 13th century using gunpowder and probably built firework rockets at an earlier date. Gunpowder-propelled military rockets appeared in Europe sometime in the 13th century, and in the 19th century British engineers made several important advances in early rocket science. In 1903, an obscure Russian inventor named Konstantin E. Tsiolkovsky published a treatise on the theoretical problems of using rocket engines in space, but it was not until Robert Goddard’s work in the 1920s that anyone began to build the modern, liquid-fueled type of rocket that by the early 1960s would be launching humans into space.
Goddard, born in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1882, became fascinated with the idea of space travel after reading the H.G. Wells’ science fiction novel War of the Worlds in 1898. He began building gunpowder rockets in 1907 while a student at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute and continued his rocket experiments as a physics doctoral student and then physics professor at Clark University. He was the first to prove that rockets can propel in an airless vacuum-like space and was also the first to explore mathematically the energy and thrust potential of various fuels, including liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen. He received U.S. patents for his concepts of a multistage rocket and a liquid-fueled rocket, and secured grants from the Smithsonian Institute to continue his research.
In 1919, his classic treatise A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes was published by the Smithsonian. The work outlined his mathematical theories of rocket propulsion and proposed the future launching of an unmanned rocket to the moon. The press picked up on Goddard’s moon-rocket proposal and for the most part ridiculed the scientist’s innovative ideas. In January 1920, The New York Times printed an editorial declaring that Dr. Goddard “seems to lack the knowledge ladled out daily in high schools” because he thought that rocket thrust would be effective beyond the earth’s atmosphere. (Three days before the first Apollo lunar-landing mission in July 1969, the Times printed a correction to this editorial.)
In December 1925, Goddard tested a liquid-fueled rocket in the physics building at Clark University. He wrote that the rocket, which was secured in a static rack, “operated satisfactorily and lifted its own weight.” On March 16, 1926, Goddard accomplished the world’s first launching of a liquid-fueled rocket from his Aunt Effie’s farm in Auburn.
Goddard continued his innovative rocket work until his death in 1945. His work was recognized by the aviator Charles A. Lindbergh, who helped secure him a grant from the Guggenheim Fund for the Promotion of Aeronautics. Using these funds, Goddard set up a testing ground in Roswell, New Mexico, which operated from 1930 until 1942. During his tenure there, he made 31 successful flights, including one of a rocket that reached 1.7 miles off the ground in 22.3 seconds. Meanwhile, while Goddard conducted his limited tests without official U.S. support, Germany took the initiative in rocket development and by September 1944 was launching its V-2 guided missiles against Britain to devastating effect. During the war, Goddard worked in developing a jet-thrust booster for a U.S. Navy seaplane. He would not live to see the major advances in rocketry in the 1950s and ’60s that would make his dreams of space travel a reality. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, is named in his honor.