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Rocket propulsion is a technology that has been around for a very long time. The
Chinese invented firework rockets around 1000 years ago (they probably invented gunpowder
about 200 B.C.). There is definite evidence that the Chinese used "fire
arrows" in battle in 994 A.D., and these were probably arrows propelled by gunpowder.
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Rocket pioneer |
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Until the 20th century rockets had two uses – to celebrate life with fireworks, and to destroy it with military rocketry. But as the airplane developed in the early part of the 1900's, other inventors were working on the possibility of creating larger liquid fuelled rockets with the dream of someday launching a man into space with one of them. That eventually happened in 1961 when Russian Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin orbited the earth once in Vostok 1. The largest rocket that has ever been built is the Saturn V, which was used to launch the Apollo spacecraft on their flight to the moon. The technology of rocketry has come a long way, but the science of rocket propulsion was discovered by Isaac Newton more than 300 years ago.
