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17th century
- During the latter part of the 17th century, the scientific foundations for modern rocketry were laid by the great English scientist Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727). 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.
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Today's rockets are remarkable collections of human 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.
- Early Rocketry
- Rockets in Theory and Practice
- 'Fathers' of Rocketry
- Rockets in Early Spaceflight
- Rockets of Today and Tomorrow
- Additional Resources
- Bibliography
There is evidence that rocket technology, or the early fundamentals of rocketry, was used thousands of years ago, as early as 400 B.C., for example. In an experiment at that time, Archytas, a Greek philosopher and mathematician, showed off a pseudo-rocket: a wooden pigeon suspended on wires. The pigeon was propelled by escaping steam, according to ...
By the 16th century, early rocket technology was regularly used in military skirmishes in Asia and Europe as well as in fireworks displays. While likely many people were musing on rocketry's potential during this era, we'll highlight just a couple. Austrian Conrad Haas created a "treatise" on rocketry technology, including crewed rockets, in the mi...
In the modern era, spaceflight historians often acknowledge three “fathers of rocketry” who helped push the first rockets into space. Admittedly, the term singles out a person who may have been in charge of a large team, and also comes from an era when people were less sensitive about the use of gendered language. Still, these individuals have a la...
Following World War II, several German and Nazi rocket scientists emigrated to both the Soviet Union and the United States, assisting those countries in the Space Race of the 1960s. In that contest, both countries vied to demonstrate technological and military superiority, using space as the frontier. The most famous of these engineers was Wernher ...
Several companies in many countries now manufacture uncrewed and crewed rockets — the United States, India, Europe, China and Russia, to name a few — and routinely send military and civilian payloads into space. Each of these countries has their own complex history of rocketry across many booster types, which often come with numerous variants for h...
"Roger Bacon: English Philosopher and Scientist." Theodore Crowley. Britannica. (2022, Jan. 1). https://www.britannica.com/biography/Roger-Bacon "Brief History of Rockets." NASA. (2021, May 13.) https://www.grc.nasa.gov/www/k-12/TRC/Rockets/history_of_rockets.html "On the Making of Cannons and Missiles." Gabi Rudinger. Digital Treasures. (2021, Feb...
Was the rocket conceived from the very beginning as a weapon? Did the Chinese master the scientific principles of combustion and propulsion centuries before the West?
In 1912 Robert Goddard, inspired from an early age by H.G. Wells and by his personal interest in science, began a serious analysis of rockets, 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 ...
The Birth of Rocket Science. Galileo Galilei, 1564 to 1642. In addition to his many other accomplishments, this Italian astronomer and mathematician rekindled the spirit of scientific experimentation and chal-lenged old beliefs relating to mass and gravity. He proved that an object in
Mar 20, 2016 · The fundamental principle of rocket propulsion, spewing hot gases through a nozzle to induce motion in the opposite direction, is nicely illustrated by two historic examples. The Roman writer Aulus Gellius tells a story of Archytas, who, sometime around 400 BC, built a flying pigeon out of wood.
Jun 30, 2021 · Initially used as weapons of war or in fireworks, rockets generate a force in one direction, called thrust, by the principle of action and reaction: exhaust fumes released by explosive chemicals...
