Bottle Rockets

Bottle Rockets - Intro

Traveling to the moon, once a dream now a reality. NASA has now launched many successful missions into space over the last half century. Ever stop and think about how they do it? It all starts with a rocket. Rockets have been around for centuries but it's only in the last century that we have learned to master all the energy and potential given by these marvelous machines.

In it's early stage, rockets were mostly used as range extenders. Meaning they were used to make things travel further (ie arrows) but precision wasn't a big. Sure it would go further but to where? War has also help with the construction and design of rocketry. Again the goal was mostly for distance, not height. This time however, they studied and learned how rockets could be controlled in order to reach specific targets.

It's only in the 50's that the interest of going out to space started. The Russians and the USA got into this battle of who would be the first to succeed. The Russian's did put a lot of pressure on the USA when on October 4th, 1957 they successfully launched into space the very first satellite, the Sputnik. It looked like the Russians were pulling ahead of the USA when they sent the first living thing into space. Laika the dog was sent into space November 3, 1957, followed by Yuri Gagarin who was the first human sent up on April 12, 1961. After success by Russia the Americans were successful in landing the first man on the moon on July 20, 1969.