The Men Behind Modern Rockets

“It [the rocket] will free man from his remaining chains, the chains of gravity which still tie him to this planet. It will open to him the gates of heaven.”

― Wernher Von Braun

Modern rockets today we have become more technologically advanced, they’ve got higher success rates, much of tasks are automated right from ignition up till deployment of the payload and also some can land back to Earth and be reused.

But this was not the case some decades back. Building and launching rockets were considered so difficult that it was used as a metaphor for something impossible. Yet such humongous tasks were accomplished. Rockets were powerful enough; they put men in space, took them to the moon and back. Such advancements were brought by some great men who believed that rockets could enable us in becoming a successful space faring civilization.

Konstantin E. Tsiolkovsky

One of the earliest rocket pioneers born in 1857 who believed that Earth is the cradle of humanity, but one cannot remain in the cradle forever. His interest in space travel and colonization of space grew in his teen hood. Some of his contributions to rocketry include rockets with multistage boosters, space stations, airlocks and more. He was the first person to construct a wind tunnel and also was known to design a monoplane. His publications include “Investigations of Outer Space by Rocket Devices” and “Aims of Astronauts”. He’s popularly known for his rocket equation.

Robert H. Goddard

Goddard who was born in 1882 was the first person to build a liquid propelled rocket. One of his early inspirations include a cherry tree which he climbed on Oct. 19, 1899 and it was then he thought that he could build some device that could take humans to space. Later he used to read a lot of books including Newton’s Principia Mathematica and understood the potential of Newton’s Third Law. His first liquid propelled rockets left the ground on March 16, 1926. He is also known to experiment with ion thrust engines which are in developmental phase even today. His most popular publication is “A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes”.

Hermann Oberth

This person from Romania was one of the most influential person in modern rocketry. He once said that “The rockets… can be built so powerfully that they could be capable of carrying a man aloft”. He had built his first rocket when he was fourteen. He designed a recoil rocket that could use exhaust gases to propel itself and he also envisioned multistage rockets. In the later part of his life he joined the V-2 project and quit it to develop his own solid fueled anti-aircraft rockets. Some of his publications include “The Rocket into Planetary Space” and “Ways to Spaceflight”. One of his students were Wernher von Braun, the man behind the V-2 rockets and the early American Space Program.

One important fact about these three men is that there was very little evidence of one knowing the other’s work. Hence they were given equal importance and the title “Father of Rocketry”. Although only three are mentioned here, there are yet many others such as Sergei Korolev, Robert E. Pelterie, Yves Le Prieur. However there are new innovations in this field and this is just the beginning….