HISTORY85 - The History of Rockets: From Gunpower to the Space Age

My last blog was about Robert Goddard, sometimes called the father of modern rocketry.  Researching that article made me realize that, even though I know a lot about the science of rockets (rocketry) from my aerospace background, there’s a lot about the history of rockets that I didn’t know. 

Rocket technology has evolved over more than 2000 years.  Today’s rockets are a product of a long tradition of ingenuity and experimentation, and combine technical expertise from a wide array of engineering disciplines.

This article will cover the history of rockets, beginning with early pre-scientific tinkering, then the transition to a scientific approach, the pioneers of modern rocketry, development of the V-2 rocket during World War II, the immediate post-war rocketry period, and the space age through today.  I will conclude with a quick look at where rocket technology might go from here.

 

My principal sources include: “History of Rockets,” “Hermann Oberth,” “V-2 Rocket,” “R-7 Semyorka,” “Space Age,” “Space Race,” “List of NASA Missions,” “List of Rockets of the United States,” Wikipedia.com; “Rockets Guide - A Pictorial History of Rockets,” nasa.gov; “The History of Rocket Science,” aerospaceengineeringblog.com; “The History of Rockets,” space.com; “Brief history of rockets - timeline,” sciencelearn.org; “The Military Rockets that Launched the Space Age,” airandspace.si.edu; “Chronology of Space Exploration,” solarviews.com; “A new era of spaceflight?  Promising advances in rocket propulsion,” theconversation.com; plus, numerous other online sources.

Pre-Scientific Tinkering with Rockets

The fundamental principle of rocket propulsion (as shown above) is spewing hot gases through a nozzle to induce motion in the opposite direction.

The exact date when rockets first appeared is not clear.  Records show that the Chinese developed a rudimentary form of gunpowder, a mixture of saltpeter, sulphur and charcoal dust, around 100 AD. 

This mixture of produced colorful sparks and smoke when ignited.  The powder was used in religious festivals and to make fireworks.  Tubes of bamboo, closed at one end, were packed with the powder.  Depending upon how the powder was packed and the size of the opening, a fountain of sparks or a bang would result when the powder was ignited.  It is likely that some fireworks skittered about because of the thrust produced from the gases escaping the open end.  Thus, the rocket was born.

The Chinese started tinkering with the gunpowder-filled bamboo sticks and attached them to arrows.  Initially the arrows were launched in the traditional way using bows, creating a form of early incendiary bomb, but later the Chinese realized that the bamboo sticks could launch themselves from the thrust produced by the escaping hot gases.

The first documented use of such a “true” rocket was during the battle of Kai-Keng between the Chinese and Mongols in 1232.  During this battle, the Chinese managed to hold the Mongols at bay using a primitive form a solid-fueled rocket.  A hollow tube was capped at one end, filled with gunpowder, and then attached to a long stick.  The ignition of the gunpowder increased the pressure inside the hollow tube and forced some of the hot gas and smoke out through the open end.  This created thrust to propel the rocket in the direction of the capped end of the tube, with the long stick acting as a primitive rocket guidance system that kept the rocket headed in one general direction as it flew through the air.  It is not clear how effective these arrows of flying fire were as weapons of destruction, but their psychological effects on the Mongols must have been formidable. 

Chinese Fire Arrows were used against the Mongols in AD 1232 .

 

Following the battle of Kai-Keng, the Mongols produced rockets of their own, and may have been responsible for the spread of rockets to Europe. 

In England, a Franciscan philosopher and monk named Roger Bacon is credited with being the first European to produce gunpowder after witnessing a least one demonstration of explosives from the Mongol Empire.  Bacon included a passage in his book Opus Majus (c. 1267) that describes a mixture of ingredients to create gunpowder.  He speculated that gunpowder might be useful in warfare, foreshadowing the mixture's future name, and use in guns the following century.

In the 14^th century France, Jean Froissart found that more accurate flights could be achieved by launching rockets through tubes.  Froissart's idea was the forerunner of the modern bazooka.

In the 15^th century, Joanes de Fontana of Italy designed a water surface-running rocket-powered torpedo for setting enemy ships on fire.

In the late 16^th century, German tinkerer, Johann Schmidlap, experimented with staged rockets, an idea that is the basis for all modern rockets.  Schmidlap fitted a smaller second-stage rocket on top of a larger first-stage rocket, and once the first stage burned out, the second stage continued to propel the rocket to higher altitudes. 

At about the same time, Kazimierz Siemienowicz, a Polish-Lithuanian commander in the Polish Army published a manuscript that included a design for multi-stage rockets and delta-wing stabilizers that were intended to replace the long rods then acting as stabilizers.

The Birth of Rocket Science

The scientific groundwork of rocketry was laid in the 17^th century by Galileo Galilei (1564 - 1642) and Sir Isaac Newton (1642 - 1727).  In addition to his many other accomplishments, the Italian astronomer and mathematician Galileo rekindled the spirit of scientific experimentation and challenged old beliefs relating to mass and gravity.  English scientist Sir Isaac Newton condensed all rocket science into three elegant scientific laws, Newton's Laws of Motion, in 1687.

Newton’s first law of motion explains why rockets move.  Without creating propulsive thrust the rocket will remain stationary. 

 

In the 1720s, around the time of Newton’s death, researchers in the Netherlands, Germany, and Russia started to use Newton’s laws as tools in the design of rockets.  Dutch professor Willem Gravesande built rocket-propelled cars by forcing steam through a nozzle.  In Germany and Russia, rocket designers started to experiment with larger rockets.  These rockets were powerful enough that the hot exhaust flames burned deep holes into the ground before launching.

The British colonial wars of 1792 and 1799 saw the use of rocket fire against the British army.  Hyder Ali and his son Tipu Sultan, the rulers of the Kingdom of Mysore in India, developed the first iron-cased rockets in 1792, and then used them against the British.  Casing the propellant in iron, which extended range and thrust, was more advanced technology than anything the British had seen until then.  Inspired by this technology, British Colonel William Congreve began to design his own rocket for the British forces.

Congreve fitted an iron tube with a conical nose to improve aerodynamics.  The propulsive mixture was of the same ingredients as gunpowder, but the proportions varied with the different sizes of rocket.  Congreve’s rockets had an operational range of up to three miles and were successfully used by the British in the Napoleonic Wars (1801 - 1815).  Congreve rockets were also launched from ships to attack America’s Fort McHenry in the War of 1812.  The phrase “by the rocket’s red glare,” coined by Francis Scott Key during the War of 1812 for the Star-Spangled Banner (that became America’s national anthem) referred to British-launched Congreve rockets.

Congreve rockets included an explosive warhead; incendiary warheads could also be attached.  However, even Congreve’s rockets could not significantly improve on the main shortcomings of rockets: accuracy.

Congreve rockets were used against the U.S. in the War of 1812.

 

At the time, the effectiveness of rockets as a weapon was not their accuracy or explosive power, but rather the sheer number that could be fired simultaneously at the enemy.  Congreve rockets had managed some form of basic attitude control by attaching a long stick to the explosive, but the rockets had a tendency to veer sharply off course.

In 1844, a British designer, William Hale developed spin stabilization, now commonly used in gun barrels, which removed the need for the rocket stick.  William Hale forced the escaping exhaust gases at the rear of the rocket to impinge on small vanes, causing the rocket to spin and stabilize.

Modern Rocket Pioneers

At the beginning of the 20^th century, there was a burst of scientific investigation into interplanetary travel, fueled by the creativity of fiction writers such as Jules Verne (From Earth to the Moon) and H. G. Wells (War of the Worlds).  These stories of space travel inspired three principal pioneers of modern rocket science, who dreamed that rockets could someday propel humans into space.

Konstantin Tsiolkovsky (1857 - 1935).  In 1903, high school mathematics teacher Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, son of a Polish forester who emigrated to Russia, inspired by Jules Verne, published The Exploration of Cosmic Space by Means of Reaction Devices, the first serious scientific work on space travel.  His monograph contained the Tsiolkovsky rocket equation - the principle that governs rocket propulsion - named in his honor, although it had been discovered previously.  (Tsiolkovsky is honored as being the first to apply it to the question of whether rockets could achieve speeds necessary for space travel.) 

Tsiolkovsky wrote and taught extensively about human space travel.  He advocated liquid propellant rocket engines (for greater range), orbital space stations, solar energy, and colonization of the solar system.   He also advocated the use of liquid hydrogen and oxygen as a rocket propellant, calculating their maximum exhaust velocity.

Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, Russian rocket visionary.

 

His work was essentially unknown outside the Soviet Union, but inside the country, it inspired further research, experimentation, and the formation of the Society for Studies of Interplanetary Travel in 1924.  That same year, Tsiolkovsky also wrote about multi-stage rockets, in Cosmic Rocket Trains.

One of Tsiolkovsky’s quotes, from a letter written in 1911, was particularly prescient, considering today’s space objectives to revisit the Moon and colonize Mars: “The Earth is the cradle of humanity, but one cannot live in the cradle forever.”

For his ideas, careful research, and great vision, Tsiolkovsky has been called “the father of astronautics and human spaceflight.”

Robert H. Goddard (1882 - 1945).  In 1912, Robert Goddard, American college physics professor and scientist, inspired from an early age by H.G. Wells, began serious analysis of rockets towards his dream of space travel.

In 1914, he received two patents: one for a multi-stage rocket using solid fuel, and the other for a rocket that used liquid fuel.  These two patents would eventually become important milestones in the history of rocketry.

Robert H. Goddard, American hands-on rocket development pioneer.

 

In 1919, Goddard published a short manuscript entitled “A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes” that summarized his mathematical analysis and practical experiments in designing high altitude solid-fuel (gunpowder) rockets, which he viewed as a first step to space travel.

The work included remarks about potentially someday sending a rocket to the Moon, which attracted great attention and widespread ridicule in newspapers in the United States.  Goddard’s groundbreaking paper, however, was read seriously by many rocketeers in Germany and Russia, who were stirred to build their own rockets. 

Emphasizing how far Goddard was ahead of his time, at least in the U.S., in a 1920 letter to his principal financial benefactor, the Smithsonian Institution, he discussed: photographing the Moon and planets from rocket-powered fly-by probes, sending messages to distant civilizations on inscribed metal plates, the use of solar energy in space, and the idea of high-velocity ion propulsion.  In that same letter, Goddard clearly describes the concept of the ablative heat shield, suggesting the landing apparatus be covered with "layers of a very infusible [not easily melted] hard substance with layers of a poor heat conductor between" designed to erode predictably under the extreme heat when reentering the Earth’s atmosphere, as modern space vehicle heat shields do today.  

Goddard avoided sharing details of his work with other scientists and preferred to work alone with a few technicians.  He was concerned with avoiding further public criticism and ridicule, which he believed had harmed his professional reputation.  His approach from then on, was that independent development of his ideas without interference would bring quicker results, even though he received less technical support.

Goddard experimented with solid-fuel rockets, trying various different compounds and measuring the velocity of the exhaust gases.  As a result of this work, Goddard was convinced that liquid-propellants would provide greater range.  The problem that Goddard faced was that liquid-propellant rockets were an entirely new field of research, no one had ever built one, and the system required was much more complex than for a solid-fueled rocket.

Robert Goddard about to launch the world’s first liquid-powered rocket on March 16, 1926.

 

Goddard designed the first successful liquid-fuel rocket, propelled by a combination of gasoline as fuel and liquid oxygen as oxidizer, and tested it on March 16, 1926.  The rocket remained lit for only 2.5 seconds and only reached an altitude of 41 feet.  Just like the first 40-yard powered flight of the Wright brothers in 1903, this feat seems unimpressive by today’s standards, but Goddard’s achievements put rocketry on an exponential growth curve that led to radical improvements over the next 40 years. 

Goddard continued to innovate in his rockets, making them bigger, in the now classical cylindrical configuration.  His flight testing continued through the 1930s, with his rockets achieving higher and higher altitudes (eventually reaching a maximum altitude of 1.7 miles).  He added a gyroscope system for flight control, vanes in the nozzle exhaust to adjust the direction of thrust for stability, and introduced instrument payloads and parachute recovery systems.

By the early 1940s, he developed the technology for 214 patents.  Unfortunately, the U.S. government largely ignored Goddard’s work, in spite of numerous offers from Goddard, and his warnings about potential rocket weapons being developed in Germany.

Years after his death, for his years of persistent, innovative rocketry work, he is often referred to as the “father of modern rocketry.”

Hermann Oberth (1894 - 1989). In Germany, Hermann Oberth, a Romanian by birth and (eventually) a naturalized German citizen, became fascinated by the works of Jules Verne, and devoted his life to promoting space travel.  His 1922 doctoral dissertation on rocket science for the University of Heidelberg, rejected for being too speculative, became the basis for his 1923 book, By Rocket to Space.  The book explained the mathematics of spaceflight and proposed practical rocket designs and space stations.

German Herman Oberth’s book on space exploration and rocket technology inspired a generation of rocketeers.

 

In the years that followed, Oberth’s book became the standard work for space exploration and rocket technology and was called the "Bible of scientific astronautics" in Europe.  Oberth described possible uses of two-stage rockets, manned space flight, (including a space suit for external use), a space telescope for earth observation, the duration of interplanetary flight, his ideas and the theoretical basis for space stations in near-earth orbit, and weather observation - as a starting point for flights to the Moon and to the planets.  He also included his scientific considerations and calculations for flights (including landings) to the Moon, to Asteroids, to Mars, to Venus, to Mercury, and to Comets.

This book inspired a generation of rocketeers.  Rocket societies sprang up around the world, including the German “Society for Space Travel.”  Oberth acted as something of a mentor to the enthusiasts who joined the German Society, which included Wernher von Braun, who would later lead the German development of the V-2 rocket in World War II (see below).

Without a doctorate, Oberth didn’t have opportunities to work or teach at the college level.  From 1924 through 1938, Oberth supported himself and his family by teaching physics and mathematics at the Stephan Ludwig Roth High School in Mediaș, Romania.

From 1938 -1941, non-German citizen Oberth was regarded as a security risk and was not invited to participate in the secret program underway in Germany to develop the world’s first large rocket, the V-2.  In 1941, Oberth received German citizenship and was conscripted to join the V-2 program.

Note: In the 1920s and 1930s, leading up to World War II, amateur rocketeers and scientists worldwide attempted to use rockets on airplanes, racing cars, boats, bicycles with wings, throw lines for rescuing sailors from sinking ships, mail delivery vehicles for off-shore islands, and anything else they could dream up.  Though there were many failures, experience taught the experimenters how to make their rockets more powerful and more reliable.

World War II / V-2 Rocket

German efforts just before and during World War II (WWII) led to massive technological improvements in aeronautics and rocketry.  Almost overnight, rockets graduated from novelties and dream flying machines to sophisticated weapons of destruction.

The German army began research to create a long-range missile weapon in 1931, and rapidly attained a great deal of experience with liquid-fuel rockets.

In the late 1930s, the German Society for Space Travel evolved into the team that built and flew the most advanced rocket of the time, the V-2, the world's first large-scale liquid-propellant rocket.  After much groundwork, the development of the V-2 rocket began in 1936, directed by Wernher von Braun, designed with a range of 190 miles, to deliver a one-ton explosive warhead to the heart of London without warning.  The first successful launch occurred on October 3, 1942.  On December 22, 1942, Adolf Hitler ordered the production of the V-2 in large quantities.

 

Wernher von Braun with German military officers, 1941.

Beginning on September 6, 1944, and ending on March 27, 1945, more than 3,000 V-2s were launched by the Wehrmacht against Allied targets, first London, and later Antwerp and Liège.  According to a 2011 BBC documentary, the attacks from V-2s resulted in the deaths of an estimated 9,000 civilians and military personnel, while a further 12,000 laborers and Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp prisoners died as a result of their forced participation in the production of the weapons.

Despite the success of the V-2s, they entered the war too late to affect the outcome.

The V-2 was 47 feet long, weighed 28,000 - 29,000 pounds at launch, and developed about 60,000 pounds of thrust, burning alcohol as the fuel and liquid oxygen as the oxidizer.  The peak altitude usually reached was roughly 50 miles. However, on June 20, 1944, a V-2 reached an altitude of 109 miles, making it the first rocket to reach space. 

Note: For NASA and the U.S. military, space starts at an altitude of 50 miles.  However, to the international community. space starts a little higher, at 62 miles (100 kilometers).

The V-2’s engine was 17 times more powerful than the largest rocket motor constructed up to that time; it flew at five times the speed of sound. The explosive warhead fitted in the tip of the V-2 was capable of devastating entire city blocks, but the rocket still lacked the accuracy to hit specific target reliably.

 

The V-2 rocket was a revolutionary breakthrough in rocket technology.

Towards the end of WWII, German scientists were already planning much larger rockets, today known as Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles, that could be used to attack the United States

Note:  We now know that American Robert Goddard’s 1930s rockets - as remarkable as they were for being built by one man with a few helpers - were no match for the German army’s accomplishments.  The creation of the V-2 required hundreds if not thousands of scientists, engineers, and technicians, representing all kinds of disciplines, from aerodynamics to materials science and thermodynamics.

Post World War II

At the end of World War II, competing Russian, British, and U.S, military and scientific crews raced to capture technology and trained personnel from the German rocket program at Peenemünde.  Russia and Britain had some success, but the United States benefited the most.

The U.S. carried out a secret intelligence plan known as Operation Paperclip, which brought more than 1,600 German V-2 scientists, engineers, and technicians, including Wernher von Braun, from Germany to the U.S.  The Americans also captured 300 train loads of V-2 rocket parts, and shipped them back to the United States. 

The captured Germans advised technicians from General Electric, who were charged with identifying and reassembling V-2 components in White Sands, New Mexico.

Note: Both the United States and the Soviet Union realized the potential of rocketry to produce a long-range weapon, an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), and began a variety of experimental programs.  Each country also felt the allure of being the first to travel to space.

American Rocketry. At the time that Germany was launching V-2 missiles against war-torn Europe, long-range missiles were still in the planning stages in the United States.

The same rockets that were designed to rain down on Britain were used instead by U.S. scientists as research vehicles for developing the new technology further.

At first, the rockets were used to study high-altitude conditions, by radio telemetry of temperature and pressure of the atmosphere, and detection of cosmic rays.

The WAC Corporal rocket represented the state of U.S. rocketry at the WWII’s close in 1945.  It was a small liquid-propellant rocket developed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory for the U.S. Army.  In 1948, the U.S. Army combined a captured V-2 rocket with a WAC Corporal sounding rocket to build the largest two-stage rocket to be launched in the United States.  This two-stage rocket, over the course of six flights reached a peak altitude of 250 miles. 

The WAC Corporal missile became the first U.S. ballistic missile to approach the capability of the German V-2.  The Corporal went into production in the early 1950s, and was deployed by the U.S. Army in Europe until the mid-1960s.

Meanwhile, the U.S. was also giving more consideration to long-range ballistic missiles.  Opinion especially changed in response to developments in atomic capabilities.  By 1953 U.S. weapons designers had invented a way to make atomic weapons small and lightweight.  This meant that an ICBM did not need to be as large as previously thought.  A top-secret report presented to the U.S. Air Force in early 1954 assessed ballistic missiles in light of these recent advances in nuclear weapons technology.  The Strategic Missiles Evaluation Committee worried that the Soviet Union might be ahead of the United States in long-range ballistic missiles, and recommended that the Air Force treat missile development as "an extremely high priority."  The era of the ICBM was at hand. 

The first U.S. ICBM, the Atlas missile, was initiated in the 1950s under the Convair Division of General Dynamics.  The first successful test launch of the Atlas ICBM was on 17 December 1957.  Atlas was a liquid propellant rocket burning kerosene fuel with liquid oxygen in three engines configured in an unusual "stage-and-a-half" or "parallel staging" design: two outboard booster engines were jettisoned along with supporting structures during ascent, while the center sustainer engine, propellant tanks and other structural elements remained connected through propellant depletion and engine shutdown.

The Atlas rocket was the United States’ first ICBM.

  

Soviet Rocketry. The Soviet Union took the V-2 rockets they captured at the end of the war and used them to develop their own large-scale missile technology.  In 1947, the Soviets launched their first V-2 assembled from German parts.  A year later, the country launched the first domestically produced V-2. 

The Soviets went on to develop a variety of sounding rockets and missiles based on the V-2.  They gradually increased engine thrust, made the body larger, and integrated propellant tanks with the missile's skin.  These technical refinements increased the missile's range.

Under the leadership of chief designer Sergei Korolev, the V-2 was copied and then improved upon in the R-1, R-2 and R-5 missiles.  The R-5, the last Soviet missile based on V-2 technology, had a range of 750 miles. 

At the turn of 1950s, the German designs were abandoned and replaced with the inventions of Aleksei Mikhailovich Isaev and were used as the basis for the first Soviet (and the world’s) ICBM, the R-7.

From 1954 to 1957, Soviet rocket designer Sergei Korolëv headed development of the R-7.  Successfully flight tested in August 1957, the R-7 missile was powerful enough to launch a nuclear warhead against the United States. 

The R-7 had two stages, powered by rocket engines using liquid oxygen and kerosene.  The initial launch was boosted by four strap-on liquid rocket boosters making up the first stage, with a central “sustainer” engine powering through both the first and the second stage.  Each strap-on booster included two vernier thrusters and the core stage included four. 

 

The Soviet R-7 was the world’s first ICBM.

Attention Turns to Space. In 1955, the United States and the Soviet Union announced individual intentions to place a scientific satellite into orbit around Earth as part of the 1957-1958 International Geophysical Year, a worldwide effort to study the Earth.

In the U.S., there were two separate efforts to try to achieve this goal.  The first, led by the National Academy of Sciences, used the Vanguard, a new three-stage rocket developed by the Naval Research Laboratory, and given priority by the Eisenhower Administration, which preferred a civilian-led effort, to orbit America’s first satellite.  The second effort was a joint U.S. Army Ballistic Missile Agency - Jet Propulsion Laboratory project.  This effort used a modified Redstone missile called the Jupiter-C, part of the Redstone family of rockets developed under naturalized (1955) U.S. citizen Wernher von Braun, operational during the 1950s, and well tested.

However, on October 4, 1957, a mere 12 years after the end of WWII, the U.S. and the world were stunned by the Soviet Union’s launch of Sputnik, the world’s first artificial satellite, using an improved version of the R-7, called the Vostok rocket.

Note:  On that fateful date, I was driving to the University of Michigan with my parents to check out the school as a potential place to start my college education.  This “space event” helped firm up my commitment to become an aerospace engineer.   

A month later, on November 3, 1957, the Soviets sent the dog Laika into orbit.

The U.S. responded by accelerating both American programs and attempted to launch a tiny 6-inch 3-pound satellite with the Vanguard rocket on December 6, 1957.  The Vanguard rose about 4 feet into the air, but the main engine lost thrust and the rocket fell back onto the pad, exploding in a huge fireball.

The Vanguard rocket blew up on the launch pad, trying to launch the first U.S. artificial satellite. 

 

On February 1, 1958, the U.S. successfully launched its first artificial satellite Explorer 1 into orbit, using the Jupiter-C rocket.

Jupiter-C rocket shortly before the February 1, 1958 launch of America's first artificial satellite, Explorer I. 

 

The Space Age

Preview:  Rockets launched the Space Age.  They provided the power needed to take spacecraft and people on flights to orbit the Earth and go beyond.  Starting with the launch of the first satellite Sputnik in 1957, and continuing through today, countries and companies around the globe have built a variety of rockets to travel into space for science, defense, commerce, and even tourism.

The successful Soviet launch of Sputnik startled the world, giving the impression that America was behind the Soviets in science and technology.  What began as a competition to build new rockets for defense and militaristic purposes, now also became a competition to reach space. 

The Vanguard launch failure and the inefficiency of different organizations competing for scarce resources to develop space capabilities contributed to the U.S. government establishing a single civilian space agency, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), in 1958. 

A complete discussion, or even listing, of all the space missions, and their launch rockets, to date is far beyond the scope of this blog. 

Here is a partial timeline of rocketry after the first earth satellites were launched in 1957/1958 - to the present and plans beyond.  Emphasis will be on major launch systems and crewed missions (mission with humans on board).  Both government and private missions and launch rockets will be included.  Military missions will not be covered.

It took several more years before either the Soviets or the U.S. felt confident enough to use rockets to send people into space.  Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin was the first human in space, leaving Earth on April 12, 1961, aboard a Vostok-K rocket for a multi-orbit flight.  About three weeks later, Alan Shepard made the first American suborbital flight on a Redstone rocket. 

Convinced of the political need for an achievement which would decisively demonstrate America's space superiority, on May 25, 1961, President John Kennedy proposed that the U.S. "should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth.”

In 1961, the first crewed flight of the U.S. Mercury Program (1961 - 1963) occurred, using the Redstone missile rocket.  A few missions later NASA switched to Atlas rockets to achieve orbit, and in 1962, John Glenn became the first American to orbit Earth.  The following Gemini Program (1965 - 1966), to practice low-orbit space maneuvers, used the Gemini-Titan II rocket, a modified ICBM.  Both Mercury and Gemini spacecraft returned to Earth after mission completion using ablative heatshield technology forecasted by space pioneer Robert Goddard.

 A new, much more powerful rocket was required for the Apollo Program (1968 - 1972) to land and return astronauts on/from the Moon.

Directed by Wernher von Braun, the U.S. developed the expendable Saturn V rocket, which, at 363 feet tall, included three liquid fuel stages - the last one designed to be powerful enough to break away from Earth's gravity. 

Note: After his German V-2 efforts, Wernher von Braun worked for the United States Army on an intermediate-range ballistic missile program; he developed the Redstone rocket that launched the United States' first space satellite Explorer 1 in 1958.  In 1960, his group was assimilated into NASA, where he served as director of the newly formed Marshall Space Flight Center and as the chief architect of the Saturn V super heavy-lift launch vehicle that propelled the Apollo spacecraft to the Moon.

Wernher von Braun was key to the U.S. space program.

 

As of 2023, the Saturn V remains the only launch vehicle to carry humans beyond low Earth orbit (roughly an altitude of 1200 miles for circular orbits).  Saturn V’s payload capability to low Earth orbit was about 260,000 pounds, which included the third stage and unburned propellant needed to send the Apollo Command and Service module, and the Lunar Module (landing craft) to the Moon.  (The 260,000 pounds also included propellant for the Command Module’s return to Earth and controlled reentry.)  President Kennedy's Moon landing goal was achieved on July 20, 1969, with the flight of Apollo 11; astronaut Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on the Moon.  The Saturn V rocket successfully launched five additional moon-landing missions between 1969 and 1972. 

 

Saturn V launched six manned missions to the Moon.

NASA's Space-Shuttle Program (1981 - 2011) was the first reusable launch vehicle system.  The Space Shuttle - composed of a winged orbiter with three liquid-fueled engines, was launched with two reusable solid rocket boosters and a disposable external fuel tank - carried up to seven astronauts and up to 65,000 pounds of payload into low Earth orbit.  When its mission was complete, the orbiter would reenter the Earth's atmosphere, land like a glider, and be used on additional missions.  Its missions involved carrying large payloads to various orbits including the International Space Station (ISS) beginning in 1998, providing crew rotation for the space station, and performing service missions on the Hubble Space Telescope (1990 - ongoing).  The orbiter also recovered satellites and other payloads (e.g., from the ISS) from orbit, and returned them to Earth, though its use in this capacity was rare.  In 1986, a solid rocket booster's O-ring failed and caused a catastrophic explosion, killing seven astronauts aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger.  The solid rocket boosters were redesigned after the incident.

The Space Shuttle was the world’s first reusable launch vehicle system,

 

For non-crewed missions, rockets have been used to send spacecraft farther into our solar system: past the moon, Venus and Mars in the early 1960s, which later expanded into the exploration of dozens of moons and planets.  Rockets have carried spacecraft throughout the solar system so that we now have imagery of every planet (as well as the dwarf planet Pluto), many moons, comets, asteroids, and smaller objects.  The Voyager 1 spacecraft (launched on September 5, 1977) was able to leave our solar system and reach interstellar space.

Several companies in many countries now manufacture uncrewed and crewed rockets - including the United States, India, Europe, China and Russia - and routinely send military and civilian payloads into space.  Each of these countries has its own complex history of rocketry across many booster types, which often come with numerous variants for heavier loads or smaller loads, or different celestial destinations.

Meanwhile, crewed spaceflight continued to proliferate.  The Soviets used variants of their Soyuz rocket (which had evolved from their R-7 rocket) for decades, bringing humans into space with several different versions.  They developed a moon rocket called N-1, but its program was permanently suspended after multiple delays and problems, including a deadly explosion.

The evolution of Soviet space launch vehicles from their R-7 vehicle.

 

Today, NASA is developing a Space Launch System (SLS) to take astronauts to the moon and potentially (eventually) Mars.  As the primary launch vehicle of NASA’s Artemis Moon landing program, SLS is designed to launch the crewed Orion spacecraft on a trans-lunar trajectory.  The SLS is a Space Shuttle-derived launch vehicle. The first stage of the rocket is powered by one central core stage and two outboard solid rocket boosters.  All planned SLS variations share a common core stage design, while they differ in their upper stages and boosters.  Payload capability to low Earth Orbit is about 209,000 pounds.  The first SLS launch was the uncrewed Artemis 1, which took place on 16 November 2022.  

 

Planned configurations for NASA’s Space Launch System.

Private industry is rapidly assuming a major role in crewed missions.  Today, for International Space Station missions, NASA is using Elon Musk’s SpaceX crewed Dragon spacecraft aboard the partially reusable SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.  The first (booster) stage carries the second stage and payload to a pre-determined altitude, after which the second stage lifts the payload to its ultimate destination.  The booster is capable of landing vertically to facilitate reuse.  Both stages are powered by SpaceX Merlin engines, using cryogenic liquid oxygen and rocket-grade kerosene as propellants.  Payload capability to low Earth orbit is about 140,000 pounds.  The Dragon spacecraft returns to Earth with an ocean splashdown and is reusable.

SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

 

Rocket technology continues to change rapidly in private industry, with milestones often accruing in a period of just months.  For example, SpaceX and Blue Origin have pioneered the use of reusable self-landing rockets.  Numerous companies are launching clutches of satellites on a single rocket, as satellite technology continues to improve and miniaturize.   Rockets are getting lighter and more adaptable through 3D printing, more efficient fuel, and continued improvements in machine learning (artificial intelligence).

The most high-profile private future rocket system in development is Starship and its Super Heavy rocket, a SpaceX project that is expected to bring NASA astronauts to the Moon in the short term and settlers to Mars in the much longer term.  The launch vehicle consists of the first-stage Super Heavy Booster and the second-stage spacecraft named Starship.  Both stages are powered by Raptor rocket engines, which burn liquid methane and liquid oxygen.  Both are designed to be fully reusable, performing controlled landings on the arms of the launch tower used to lift the vehicles and, eventually, reflown within hours.  Starship is designed to have a payload capacity of 330,000 pounds to low Earth orbit in a fully reusable configuration and 550,000 pounds when expended.  Starship vehicles in low Earth orbit are planned to be refilled with propellant launched in tanker Starships to enable transit to higher energy destinations such as geosynchronous orbit, the Moon, and Mars.  The first and so far, only orbital test flight was attempted on 20 April 2023, when an anomaly caused the vehicle to tumble out of control four minutes after launch.

Comparative sizes of U.S. space launch vehicles.    Increasing payload capability to low
Earth orbit from left to right.

 

Where do we go from here?

As we have seen, over the last 2000 years, rockets have evolved from simple toys and military weapons to complex machines capable of transporting humans into space.    

But today’s and near future vehicles (would) take a long time (years) to reach their deep space interplanetary destinations, such as Mars and beyond.  More efficient rockets, that can reach higher speeds in space, could shorten flight times dramatically.

Here a few advanced rocket propulsion systems under development or consideration:

Rotating Detonation Rocket Engine. Differs from a traditional chemical rocket engine by generating thrust using a supersonic combustion phenomenon known as a detonation.  This design produces more power while using less fuel than today’s propulsion systems and has the potential to power both human landers and interplanetary vehicles.

Fission Thermal Rockets. A propellant gas, such as hydrogen, is heated by nuclear fission to high temperatures, creating a high -pressure gas within the reactor chamber.  Like with chemical rockets, this can only escape via the rocket nozzle, again producing thrust.   Nuclear fission rockets are not envisaged to produce the kind of thrust necessary to lift large payloads from the surface of the Earth into space.  Once in space though, they are much more efficient than chemical rockets – for a given mass of propellant, they can accelerate a spacecraft to much higher speeds and greatly shorten flight times to destinations.

Electric Propulsion.  Ion drives generate charged particles (ionization), accelerate them using electric fields, and then fire them from a thruster.  The propellant is a gas such as xenon, a fairly heavy element that can be easily electrically charged.  As the charged xenon atoms accelerate out of the thruster, they transfer a very small amount of momentum to the spacecraft, providing gentle thrust.  While slow, ion drives are among the most fuel-efficient of all spacecraft propulsion methods, so could get us further. 

Solar Sails. Sunlight is comprised of photons, which when impinging on a sail, can produce thrust.  As the energies of individual photons are very small, an extremely large sail size is needed for any appreciable acceleration.  The speed gain will also depend on how far from the Sun you are.  A way of improving efficiency and reducing sail size is to use a laser to propel the spacecraft forward. Lasers produce very intense beams of photons which can be directed onto a sail to provide much higher acceleration.

 

I really enjoyed putting this history of rockets together.  I spent 35 years working in the aerospace industry and got to see some of these tremendous advancements close up.  Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, Robert Goddard, and Herman Oberth would be proud of what they started.