SHUBHRA DUTTA
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HISTORY OF ROCKETRY

— The Unknown Story


Using rockets in space science is the most extraordinary step towards the exploration of outer space. Now we are planning to send humans into another planet or calculating to reach into the interstellar space, but can we even imagine all these things happening without rockets, but the discovery of rocket did not get its required value at least in its earlier phase.


Chinese history:-
It all begun with a very familiar thing, now we call it fire-crackers. Chinese discovered a formula of making fire-crackers using gun powder. Late in the third century (B.C) bamboo tubes filled with saltpeter (sodium nitrate), sulphur and charcoal were tossed into ceremonial fires during religious festival in hopes that the light and sound would frighten evil spirits.
Until 1200 (A.D.) this was a method of mere entertainment and enjoyment. By the beginning of this century an emperor from The ‘Sung Dynasty’ called “Wan Hu” first envisioned to fly high into the sky with rockets. So, he ordered his army make a rocket which will carry him towards the sky and would be able to fly high enough. To carry out his behest they made a frame of woods which could carry a person and tied it with 47 rockets. The rocket took off and obviously never came back. That’s lunatic right? Yes! But he was the pioneer of modern generation rocketry.


Rocket in wars:-
The later story is unknown but the Mongols adapted Chinese rocket technology and the invention spread via the Mongol invasions to the Middle East and to Europe in the mid -13th century. During The Renaissance in Italy Roger Bacon also did his research in rocketry but his research was mainly focusing how to use it in war-field.


Early-modern Rocketry:-
Using rockets in war-field but in a better way paved the first way towards the modern rocketry. Germans first developed the techniques to use and control a rocket in war-field. In Europe, Konard Kyser described rockets in his military treatise Bellifortis around 1405. The name Rocket comes from Italian “rocchetta” meaning “bobbin” or “little spindle”, given due to the similarity in shape to the bobbin or spool used to hold the thread to be fed to a spinning wheel. In this period Germans also used little rockets for sending letters and documents but this came to an end too.


Indian History:-
The Mysorean rockets were the first successful iron-cased rockets, developed in the late 18th century in the kingdom of Mysore under the rule of Hyder Ali and later followed by his son Tipu Sultan. The Congreve rockets used by British military was based on Mysorean rockets, Mysorean rockets used compressed powder and was fielded in Nepoleonic wars. It was these rockets which were used to siege to Fort McHenry. The effective range was increased from 100 to 2000 yards then.

Modern Rocketry:-The modern rockets came into picture by the “Fathers of Rocketry”, W. Moore who approached mathematical treatments in rocket dynamics, R. Goddard, used a supersonic nozzles to the combustion chamber of a liquid propellant rocket and W. Leitch who proposed an idea to send humans into the space through rockets. Though it was used broadly in rocket artillery in world war-II. After that it began to use in both military and space programs. Rockets came into space programs independently by Soviet Union’s space exploration by Sergei Korlev,followed by American crewed programs like Project Mercury, Project Gemini and later in Apollo programme in 1969 with the first crewed landing on moon using Saturn V rocket. Now we use various modern rockets, launch vehicles, these are way more powerful, advanced and precised.

-Sources from Wikipedia and Mahakash Bidya o Kritrim Upograho Byabostha by Sudhangshu Patra.