Science of Rocketry Fueled By the Imagination From Ancient Times

From Space Exploration Network

Humanty’s first faltering steps toward flight were taken by the Chinese.

As far back as 2,800 years ago, the Chinese figured out that if they attached sheets of silk to a bamboo frame, it would catch the wind and be carried into the sky. That most basic of flying machines, the kite, had been born.

Ancient Chinese sources suggest that kites were used for measuring distances and communications. There are even records that kites were used to lift men – but you might have wanted to give the experience a miss because these earliest “flights” seem to have been used as an inventive form of execution (presumably involving a fairly rough landing).

In about 100BC, a Greek inventor known as Hero of Alexandria invented a machine that used principles that would one-day be harnessed by steam engines and rockets.

Designed as nothing more than a novelty, Hero’s Aeolipile (left) was a small water-filled sphere that, when heated above a flame, would spin at great speed. The heat turned the water inside to steam, which was allowed to escape through a narrow tube. The escaping steam provided the thrust needed to caused the device to spin.

Unfortunately, not even Hero saw the potential of his ‘toy’ – if he had, we might have gone to the Moon a thousand years ago. But he didn’t and his device was forgotten for almost 2,000 years.

The first record we have of a rocket as we would recognise it comes from China in the first century AD.

The Chinese had invented a simple form of gunpowder made from saltpeter, sulphur and charcoal, which they used to create crowd-pleasing explosions at religious festivals. Their firecrackers were made by filling a bamboo tube with gunpowder, sealing the ends and tossing them into a fire. How the progression was made to rocketry is unclear (perhaps the seal came off one end of the firecracker one day and, instead of exploding, it burst out of the fire).

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