![]() ![]() A moment later, a boom louder than thunder sent everyone around diving for cover. On his signal, servants quickly lit the fuses on the rockets, each filled with highly explosive gunpowder. Wan took a wicker chair, strapped forty-seven rockets to it, and planned to use a set of kites to steer himself through the air. The rockets weren’t superaccurate and probably didn’t do a ton of damage, but the explosions, smoke, and fire were so terrifying that the Mongols turned back and fled!Īnd according to legend, during the midsixteenth century, a Chinese official named Wan-Hu wanted to visit the moon. ![]() The Chinese Army built weapons that looked (and acted) like gigantic bottle rockets and launched them at the attacking Mongol Army. In 1232, the Chinese fought the Mongols at the Battle of Kai-Keng and used rockets on the battlefield for the first time in history. The first rockets were invented when Chinese alchemists accidentally discovered gunpowder while trying to create an elixir of life. So far, the most efficient way to escape Earth’s gravity is to use rocket propulsion, which is easier said than done. Have you ever looked up at the moon and wondered how far away it really is? To the naked eye, it sometimes looks as if you could just reach out and grab it, but the moon is actually 232,271 miles away from us! What’s even crazier is that between 19, twelve men actually made it to the surface of the moon and back! That said, it wasn’t exactly a smooth journey from the Earth to the moon.Īs it turns out, the hardest part of space travel is actually getting off Earth. “How many things have been denied one day, only to become realities the next!” -Jules Verne, From the Earth to the Moon The story of the space program isn’t about failure not being an option it’s about humanity coming together, knowing full well that failure is always an option, and then persevering anyway. On the ground, mechanics, scientists, and engineers all worked together, doing incredibly complex mathematics (by hand), and building spaceships out of materials that you could only find in a junkyard today. That’s not a very long time! These pilots (and most of the early astronauts were pilots) were using new tech like jet engines and rockets, fearlessly strapping themselves onto a few thousand gallons of jet fuel and blasting off through the stratosphere at thousands of miles per hour.īut getting the first men into outer space required more than just the astronauts-it was a team effort that required a massive number of people. The first time anyone had crossed the Atlantic Ocean in an airplane was in 1919, and just forty years later people were orbiting the Earth in outer space. Many of the first astronauts had no idea if their new technology could actually carry them into space. And, hopefully, using that knowledge to make life better for humanity and our planet as a whole. For them, it was never about violence or conquest, but rather about finding new worlds, exploring the depths of space, and furthering scientific understanding. The intrepid men and women who go on these missions have all the bravery of the adventurers, explorers, and pioneers who first made important discoveries right here on planet Earth. ![]() But heroic astronauts around the world face these dangers head-on, refusing to let the fear of failure stop them from trying to accomplish incredible things. The possibility for failure is always there. Thirteen more died during training or in practice missions. A human can only survive a few seconds out there without a space suit, and in the 1960s and ’70s, the only thing that separated brave American astronauts and Soviet cosmonauts from certain death was a thin sheet of metal and a bunch of technology that looked as if it came from a cheesy sci-fi movie.Īs of 2018, eighteen people have died in spaceflight accidents over the course of history. If Mission Control didn’t solve the problem-and fast-the astronauts would die.īut failure is always an option, of course, and there probably isn’t a worse place for something to go wrong than in the vacuum of outer space. In 1970, Flight Director Gene Kranz told his team at NASA’s Mission Control that “failure is not an option.” They needed to bring a group of stranded astronauts home from lunar orbit. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |