"During a royal banquet in the 13th century, the wife of Emperor Li Chung was terrified when a ground rat scurried beneath her chair. The "ground rat" was a self-propelled device that was more like a firework, "made from a bamboo tube filled with gunpowder that shot about in all directions on the floor," Smithsonian Magazine wrote. Smithsonian researchers led by Frank Winter, former curator of rockets at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum, dug deeper into these early "rockets" and discovered that the lances arose from a more modest device called the "ground rat" in the 12th century, described in a book called Rustic Tales in Eastern Ch’i (Ch’in yeh-yu). (Today, it is a prefecture in Henan province.) The Chinese used "flying fire lances" against the Mongol Empire as they moved against the former Chinese capital Kaifeng. The first military use of rocket technology was also recorded in China later in 1232 CE, according to Smithsonian Magazine (opens in new tab). "According to a text from that era," ThoughtCo continued, "smoke and flames result, so that hands and faces have been burnt, and even the whole house where they were working burned down." (Image credit: Zheng Bin/Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center.) This mixture had no discernable life-lengthening properties, but it did explode with a flash and a bang when exposed to an open flame," ThoughtCo wrote.Ī Chinese Long March 6 rocket lifts off from Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center carrying SDGSAT-1 on Nov. "During the Tang Dynasty, around 850 A.D., an enterprising alchemist - whose name has been lost to history - mixed 75 parts saltpeter with 15 parts charcoal and 10 parts sulfur. Saltpeter was theorized to have life-extending properties and it was that interest in seeking a sort of immortality that helped lead to gunpowder's development, according to ThoughtCo (opens in new tab). The escaping steam created thrust that would make the sphere rotate.įurther developments in early rocket technology were recorded in the 9th century when Chinese monks developed what is now called "gunpowder," a mixture of saltpeter (potassium nitrate), sulfur and charcoal. Gas from the steaming water went inside of the sphere and escaped through two L-shaped tubes on opposite sides. This is a sphere-shaped device that sat on top of a boiling pool of water. Around 300 years after the pigeon experiment, the Greek mathematician Hero of Alexandria is said to have invented the aeolipile (also called Hero's engine), NASA added.
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