Early Timeline

A brief Early Timeline of Rocket development

The mighty space rockets of today are the result of more than 2,000 years of invention, experimentation, and discovery. First by observation and inspiration and then by methodical research, the foundations for modern rocketry were laid.

EARLY TIMELINE

• The first recorded use of rocket propulsion was by Archytas, 428 to 347 B.C. using a jet of steam or compressed air.

• Another recorded idea of rocket propulsion was around the 1st century BC by Vitruvius in his treatise De architectura describes an Aeolipile.

• The first recorded practical understanding of rocket propulsion was from the steam engine or reaction steam turbine designed by Hero of Alexandria 2000 years ago with his Aeolipile.

• Chinese were the first to make solid fuel rockets using gunpowder in a rudimentary form of it from the first century, A.D. In 1232 AD that became the first use of rockets as weapons.

• Roger Bacon, c. 1214 to c. 1292 improved on the Chinese rockets, Unfortunately for weaponry "It is possible with it to destroy a town or an army”.

• Wan Hu in the Sixteenth Century understood that rockets could fire him into space and was killed trying.

• Galileo Galilel 1564 to 1642 described a law of motion called 'Inertia'

• Around 1651 Kazimierz Siemienowicz published a design for multistage rockets

• Sir Isaac Newton wrote “Rocket Principles” and “Practical Rocketry” explaining his three laws of motion in 1687.

• Konstantin E. Tsiolkovski, 1857 to 1935 understood rocket engines, orbital space stations, solar energy, and colonization of the Solar System. His most famous work, “Research into Interplanetary Space by Means of Rocket Power,” was published in 1903, He wrote “The Earth is the cradle of humanity, but one cannot live in the cradle forever.”

• 1901 Jules Verne wrote about going to the moon and understood “weightless”

• Robert Goddard built and flew the world’s first liquid propellant rocket on March 16, 1926.

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