A Brief History of "Rocket Science"

by Robert Lyon Richards

January 4, 1995

Rocket Science?! What the heck is that? Well, I guess that there are as many interpretations of that phrase as there are speakers of our language, but I interpret it to mean:

"The marriage of vastly different scientific fields, such as (but not limited to!), chemistry, physics, astronomy, biology, etc., required to thrust mankind and/or his senses beyond the terrestrial boundaries of his home planet."

Whoa! That was a little windy! Okay, let's say it this way:

"Rocket Science" is the combination of the different tools required to put man or man made objects into space.

Okay, that makes a little more sense.

The specific "tools" referred to are the various scientific methods and devices required for the construction and operation of an Asteroid Colony. These could include lighting systems or propulsion or air filters or a toilet or any of thousands of other things needed to keep the colonists alive.

In an effort to provide you with a little objective perspective, I would here like to present a rough "time table" of events down through history which, in my opinion, have had the greatest of impacts on mankind's ability to support life beyond the planet earth. Please refer to the listed references for more detailed information. This list is, of necessity, very condensed. You will find many things in the pages of the reference works (or similar texts) which I would have gladly included here, were there more space. Alas, though space is practically infinite, paper is not.

Note that, in some cases, I have "Guestimated" dates - especially in the earlier years - but this should not significantly effect the content of this section.

Select a year from the list below, or simply scroll down through the page;

600 BC, 60 AD, 1300, 1600, 1685, 1800, 1860, 1900, 1919, 1925, 1940, 1950, 1959, 1961, 1967, 1972, 1986

1.5 Million BC Man begins using tools. {R.31}

500,000 B.C. Ancient man discovers fire, and begins to have the time to ponder the universe. {R.31}

20,000-10,000 B.C. (?) Invention of the plow allows man to spend much more time thinking.

3,000 B.C. (Roughly) Written language appeared and allowed man to start recording his ideas and experiments. This allowed future generations to expand all fields of human endeavor by building on the work and dreams of previous generations. {R.25.9}

2,200 B.C. (Roughly) Copper was smelted in Europe. {R.25.9}

600 B.C. Philosophers in Ionia first proposed that, instead of by supernatural manipulation, the universe operated on a cause and effect basis, and that "Natural Law" was comprehensible by man. This philosophy is the foundation of modern science. {R.17.2}

600 B.C. Chinese alchemy was founded by Lau Tzu. {R.25.6}

500 B.C. Alcmaeon of Ionia made the first studies of anatomy and embryology, but many of his ideas were lost for almost two thousand years. {R.17.3}

400 B.C. Hippocrates put forth the view that the human body was a machine of sorts, and that disease was a malfunction of this machine and not the intervention of demons. {R.17.5}

384 B.C. Aristotle was born in Greece, and later made great contributions to almost all fields of science. {R.17.6} {R.25.12}

60 A.D. Dioscorides of Greece founded the science of pharmacology by making written descriptions of over six hundred species of plants and their medicinal properties. {R.1.1}

300 A.D. One of the first encyclopedias of alchemy was written. {R.25.21}

Early 1200's AD The Chinese invented gunpowder and began experimenting with explosive and incendiary devices. {R.1} {R.25.8}

1206-1280 German scholar Albertus Magnus, with the aid of Latin translations of some of the early Greek texts, laid a new foundation for the sciences. There was virtually no progress in any field of science from about 200 A.D. to about 1100 A.D. {R.17.10-15}{R.1.1}

Late 1200's Chinese experiments with gunpowder produced the first paper rockets - consisting of gunpowder rolled in a hollow paper tube. These primitive rockets are still in use today - we call them "Bottle Rockets". The next time you see a "Bottle Rocket", think about the fact that the technology which produced it has had almost 700 years to mature!{R.1.1}

1300's The Chinese invented the rocket powered arrow. This basically consisted of a bottle rocket, with an arrow for the stick. This proved to be a very effective weapon in battle, and was either adopted or invent by the people of India in the late 1300's. The basic technology remained essentially unchanged, but still in wide spread use, until the early 1800's.

1316 The first book about anatomy was published. {R.17.15}

1543 Copernicus proposed that, instead of orbiting the earth as most people "Know", all of the planets, including the earth, are actually in orbit around the sun. Most "educated" people of the day considered him crazy. This event is now considered to be the beginning of the modern "Scientific Revolution". {R.3.24} {R.17.9} {R.19.4}

1553-1617 Prospero Alpini rediscovered that plants have male and female sexes. {R.17.17}

1543 The first really accurate book about anatomy was published by Andreas Vesalius of Belgium. {R.17.20}

1550 Ambroise Paré revolutionized the treatment of wounds by using much less severe healing methods than were commonly in use at the time. {R.17.21}

1597 The first chemistry textbook was published by Andreas Libavius. {R.25.44}

1600 (Roughly) The telescope and the microscope were invented. {R.17.27-31}

1610 Galileo made the first detailed studies of planetary motion. He also revolutionized basic science by advocating the use of "The Experimental Method". {R.3.24} {R.17.24-28} {R.19.5}

It is interesting to note here that our basic tool for reaching the asteroids, the rocket, has been around longer than our basic concept of what an asteroid or planet is.

1610 A Flemish alchemist named Jan Baptista van Helmont made the first experiments in the field of biochemistry. {R.17.26}

1628 William Harvey published a book describing the human circulatory system. {R.17.23-24}

1632-1723 Anton van Leeuwenhoek made great improvement in lenses for microscopy, and made many fundamental discoveries in the microscopic world - including life forms consisting of a single cell. {R.17.29-30} {R.19.35}

1650's The vacuum pump was first perfected in Germany by Otto von Guerick. {R.25.70}

1658 Robert Boyle built his own vacuum pump and began experiments which eventually led to the isolation of individual gasses from the atmosphere. {R.25.41-86}

1668 Franscesco Redi discovered that maggots were the result of flies laying eggs, instead of being spontaneously generated from decaying meat as was commonly believed. {R.17.32}

1685 Issac Newton discovered the Law of Gravitation and founded modern physics. {R.19.5}

1735 Carolus Linnaeus established the modern science of taxonomy, or the classification of species. {R.17.36}

1752 RenÆ Antoine Ferchauld de RÆaumur, a French physicist, proved that digestion is a chemical, as opposed to a mechanical, operation. {R.17.46}

1772-1774 An English chemist named Joseph Priestly discovered oxygen, and that it can be produced by plants. {R.17.47} {R.19.73} {R.25.99}

1773 Otto Friderich MÆller made some of the first observations and classifications of bacteria. {R.17.30}

1780 Antoine Laurent Lavoisier discovered the carbon dioxide exchange cycle between plants and animals. He also discovered nitrogen in the air. {R.17.47-48} {R.25.96-99}

1781 Astronomer William Herschel discovered Uranus. {R.3.13}

1800 Alessandro Volta wrote a paper about simple batteries. {R.25.147}

1801 (January 1) The first asteroid, Ceres, was discovered by Giuseppe Piazzi {R.45.4}

1800-1850 John Dalton revolutionized chemistry by laying the groundwork for the periodic table of the elements. {R.25.128-146}

1804 British inventor, William Congreve, began experimenting with "stick guided" rockets and made substantial improvements to their propulsion and guidance systems. These rockets were used extensively in battle by the British Empire, and are they to which our national anthem refers when it says "...the rockets red glare...". {R.1}

1820 Achromatic lenses became available to scientists, leading to great improvements in the quality of both telescopes and microscopes. {R.17.31}

1823 John Joseph Griffin published the first of a series of textbooks called "Chemical Reactions". This brought the study of, and experimentation with, chemistry into the hands of the common man. {R.25.185-191}

1824 C. H. Pfaff published the first major textbook about analytical chemistry. {R.25.181}

1825 Michael Faraday isolated the chemical benzine at the Royal Institute in London. {R.9.18}

1831 Faraday demonstrated that electricity can be produced with magnetism. {R.9.18}

1840's Julius Robert von Mayer stated that the radiation of heat and light from the sun is the source of all other forms of energy on the earth. {R.17.49}

1840's Jean Baptiste Boussingault showed that animals cannot obtain nitrogen from the atmosphere, but must rely on it being part of their food. {R.17.86}

1844-1865 William Hale, an Englishman, made vast improvements in the Congreve type rockets. Mr. Hale built the worlds first "spin stabilized" rocket and eliminated the "guidestick".

1857 Gregor Johann Mendel began his study of genetics. {R.17.74}

1859 Charles Darwin published "The Origin of Species". {R.19.5} {R.17.39}

1860's Louis Pasteur greatly enhanced the quality of life for mankind with his "Germ Theory of Disease". {R.17.91-100} {R.18.3} {R.19.36}

1863 (?) Jules Verne had "From the Earth to the Moon" published. This was a science fiction work which had a great impact on many scientists and scholars of the day. {R.24.7}

1873 James Clerk Maxwell finished a work called "A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism", which laid the mathematical foundations for the modern science of electronics. {R.9.19}

1878-1888 Heinrich Hertz built and tested the first working radio transmitter and receiver. {R.9.20}

1880's Konstantine Tsiolkovsky was a mathematics teacher at a small Russian school. In his spare time, he expanded on the ideas of Isaac Newton and developed the mathematical and theoretical formulae describing rocket propulsion in space. {R.1.227}

1882 Thomas Edison discovered the "Edison Effect", which eventually led to the invention of the vacuum tube. {R.9.41}

1896 (June 2) Guglielmo Marconi applied for the first patent on a radio apparatus in England. {R.9.4}

1896 Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel launched the first camera carrying rocket, which took aerial photographs of a small Swedish Village. The camera was recovered via parachute. The craft was first designed in France in 1888. {R.1.251}

1899 (November) Marconi founded "The Marconi Wireless Telegraph Corporation of America", which became the "Radio Corporation of America" (RCA) twenty years later. {R.9.8}

1900 (April 26) Marconi received the first patent for a tunable radio transmitter and receiver system. {R.9.10}

1901 (December 12) Guglielmo Marconi and George Kemp receive the first trans-atlantic radio signals - from England to Newfoundland. {R.9.1}

1903 Greenleaf Whittier Pickard invented the semi-conductor diode. {R.9.32}

1905 Lee de Forest invented the first three-electrode vacuum tube, which he called the "Audion". This device made the first really practical electronic amplifiers possible. {R.9.45}

1906 The first international regulations governing radio communications were adopted. {R.9.54}

1906 (Christmas Eve) Reginald Aubrey Fessenden made the first voice radio transmission. (Actually, it was music). {R.9.35}

1909 First regularly scheduled radio broadcast (in Morse Code). {R.9.87}

1912 (May 7) The Radio Act of 1912 established the first regulations governing amateur radio communications. Though intended to destroy or curtail amateur involvement in radio, this was the driving force behind some of the greatest improvements in electronic technology. {R.9.58}

1914 American scientist Robert Goddard began experimenting with rockets. {R.2.22}

1919 (August) The first vacuum tubes available for purchase by the common man were advertised in a publication called "Radio Amateur News", at $7.00 each. {R.9.66}

1919 (Fall) The Radio Corporation of America (RCA) was granted a charter. This brought a number of different patents under the control of a single company and led to significant advances in the field of radio science. {R.9.81}

1919 Robert Goddard's paper, "A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes", was published. The work was ridiculed in public by the "New York Times" on January 12,1920. {R.2.21}

1920 The first commercials were broadcast over the radio waves. They could only be listened to by experimenters and military or commercial communications operators. {R.9.85}

1922 RCA began selling commercial AM radio receivers for home use. {R.9.83}

1922 (December) The British Broadcasting Company (BBC) was formed in England. {R.9.105}

1923 (November 7) First amateur radio two way contact across the Atlantic Ocean. {R.9.111}

1924 (August) Mainly because they had made great advances in the field of radio communications, amateur radio operators were allocated a larger portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. {R.9.113}

1925 Amateur experiments with radio equipment began to greatly expand mankind's knowledge of Very High Frequency (VHF) radio signal propagation. {R.9.114}

1926 (March 16) Dr. Robert Goddard achieved the first successful launch of a liquid fueled rocket in Auburn, Mass. {R.2.21}

1929 First Commercial television transmission experiments. {R.9.149}

1931 The first governmental space/rocketry research agencies were formed by Germany and Russia (separately). {R.2.6}

1932 Radio waves were discovered to be coming from the Milky Way Galaxy. {R.9.215}

1932 Edwin H. Armstrong developed the first Frequency Modulation (FM) system for radio signals. {R.9.163}

1935 Robert Watson-Watt developed the first radar system in England. {R.9.166}

1937 Amateur radio astronomer Grote Reber made the first radio maps of the sky. {R.9.216}

1939 The first U.S. governmental involvement in "Rocket Science" {R.2.6}

1940 (October 31) The FCC granted construction permits for the first fifteen commercial FM broadcast stations. {R.9.164}

1942 The first V-2 missile was launched in Germany. {R.2.39}

1942 "Aerojet Engineering Corporation" became the first commercial entity dedicated to the production of rocket engines. {R.2.59}

1945 (October) Science Fiction author Arthur C. Clarke proposed communications relay satellites in an article for "Wireless World" magazine. {R.9.189}

1946 (January 11) The first radar signals were bounced off the moon and received back on Earth. {R.9.171} {R.9.189}

1946 A joint Army/Air Force group, called project "RAND", studied the feasibility of launching a satellite into orbit. Because their craft was not able to lift an atomic bomb, they were not able to secure funding from congress. {R.2.74}

1947 The transistor was invented at Bell Telephone Laboratories in the United States. {R.9.177}

1949 (February 24) The Jet Propulsion Laboratory's (JPL) WAC CORPOAL became the first man made object to enter extraterrestrial space. It achieved an altitude of 244 miles. {R.2.65}

1950 The first color television system was approved by the FCC. {R.9.159}

1955 (March 9) Werner von Braun was Hitler's chief rocket designer during World War II, and was primarily responsible for the successful flight of the V-2 rocket in 1942. He came to work for the U.S. after the war, and later built the huge Saturn V rockets which took men to the moon. On this day he stepped forward and presented his vision of man's future in space on a network television series called "Disneyland". At that time, he predicted that a "practical passenger rocket could be built in ten years." {R.3.57}

This vision of the future fired the imaginations of a whole generation of scientists and dreamers, and I believe that this may have been the trigger which shot us to the moon. That trigger may have been pulled long before J.F.K. echoed the idea.

1957 (August 8) The United States made the first intact recovery of a man made object from space. {R.2.108}

1957 (October 4) The Russians were the first nation to put a man made object into earth orbit, with the satellite "Sputnik I". {R.2.76}

1958 (January 31) The United States launched their first satellite, Explorer I. {R.2.99}

1958 A government agency called NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) is formed in the United States to explore the peaceful and commercial uses of space and spin-off technologies. {R.3.57}{X:NASA Text}

1958 Scientists at MIT's Lincoln Laboratory successfully reflected radio signals back from the planet Venus. {R.9.171}

1958 (December) Project Score, the first communications satellite, was launched by the United States. {R.9.190}

1959 (January 2) The USSR launched Luna 1 which, after a flyby of the moon, became the first man made object to enter an orbit around the sun. {R.3.419}

1959 (March 3) Later that same year, the US had the first deep-space telemetry success, when they were able to communicate with their probe which was four hundred thousand miles from Earth. {R.2.108}

1959 (September 12) The probe "Luna 2" became the first man made object to land on another celestial body when it impacted the moon. {R.3.419}

1959 (October 4) And then, they did it again! The Probe "Luna 3" brought mankind his first vision of the dark side of the moon. {R.3.419}

1959 was a very good year for mankind's progress in the field of space science!

1960 NASA starts the George C. Marshall Space Flight center in Huntsville, Alabama. {R.2.107} Cool place to visit!

1960 The First laser (Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation) was developed by Theodore Maiman. {R.9.225}

1961 The FCC approved the first stereo FM broadcasts. {R.9.165}

1961 (December 12) Project OSCAR I was launched. The OSCAR, an acronym for "Orbiting Satellite Carrying Amateur Radio", was completely a project of amateur experimenters, who even financed it out of their own pockets. {R.9.209} {R.4.14}

1962 The first probe to visit another planet from planet Earth was launched. It was "Mariner 2" from the United States. {R.3.420}

1963 (July 26) Syncomm II was launched from the United States and became the first geostationary (almost) satellite. {R.9.200}

1964 The United States launched Mariner 4, which became the first craft to make a flyby of Mars. {R.3.421}

1965 (March 9) OSCAR III, the first active (it was a radio relay) amateur satellite, was launched. {R.9.211}

1965 (April) "Early Bird" became the world's first international telecommunications satellite. {R.4.14}

1966 (January 31) "Luna 9" from the USSR made the first successful soft landing (means it didn't crash) on the moon and returned pictures. {R.3.422}

1966 (March 31) "Luna 10" from the USSR became the first man made satellite to orbit the moon. {R.3.322}

1967 "Surveyor 6" from the United States made the first liftoff from the moon, even though it only went 10 feet. {R.3.424}

1968 (September 15) The USSR launched "Zond 5", which became the first craft to orbit the moon and return. {R.3.424}

1968 (December 21) "Apollo 8" was launched and made the first manned circumlunar flight, achieving 10 orbits around the moon before returning to Earth. {R.3.424}

1969 (July 16) "Apollo 11" was launched from the US. This mission carried the first men from Earth to walk on another celestial body, the moon. {R.2.425}

1970 (August 17) "Venera 7" was launched from the USSR, and became the first craft to make a successful landing on Venus. {R.3.425}

1970 (September 12) The USSR made the first return of surface material from another world by an automated, man-less, probe. {R.3.425}

1971 (May 28) USSR Launched "Mars 3", which made the first successful landing on Mars. {R.3.46}

1972 (March 2) The United States launched "Pioneer 10", which made the first flyby of Jupiter. {R.3.426}

1972 (December 7) Apollo 17, the sixth and final manned moon lander, was launched by the Unites States. {R.3.427}

1973 (November 3) The United States launched "Mariner 10" which, after an encounter with Venus, became the first man made craft to visit the planet Mercury. {R.3.427}

1975 (June 8) "Venera 9" was launched by the USSR. This automated craft became the first probe to successfully enter orbit around the planet Venus. {R.3.427}

1975 (August 2) "Viking I" was launched by the United States. This became the first probe from the United States to land on another planet, when it later landed on Mars and returned a wealth of data. {R.3.427}

1984-1985 Between the years of 1984 and 1985, several probes were launched to meet Halley's Comet and conduct experiments and observations. The European Space Agency (ESA) and Russia each launched a probe, and Japan launched two. The United States Congress would not approve funding, so they did not launch a Halley probe. {R.3.429}

This is particularly unfortunate, for had NASA been allowed to launch a probe which could have worked with the other country's probes, I believe that we could have increased the total amount of data gathered by several orders of magnitude. Fortunately, there WAS a wealth of data returned by the other probes.

1986 (January) "Voyager 2", from the United States, made the first encounter with the planet Uranus. {R.3.3}

1986 (January 28, Tuesday) The Space Shuttle "Challenger" exploded, on the last day of Voyager 2's encounter with Uranus. {R.3.5}

Please read the reference for this one if you have the time.

2000 (February 14) NASA's "NEAR" probe became the first craft from earth to enter orbit around an Asteroid.

Hmmm... this "short little list" turned out to be longer than I had anticipated - and I have still made many omissions.

Many of the important discoveries down through time built upon the works of earlier thinkers and dreamers. A trip through the references for this section might shed more light on the subjects.

You will probably find this section more interesting after progressing more through this web. I think that you will find that many of the individual events hold far more significance than first glance might show. The interrelationships between the differing technologies are many and deep.

© 1999, Robert Lyon Richards