Technology has remained an essential factor not only in changing human lives but also enabling them to explore and understand various heavenly bodies. Since time immemorial, human beings have always shown much interest in exploring and understanding the heavens and the functions of various objects such as the stars. While human beings initially depended on theories and myths to understand how these heavenly bodies were formed and even how they operate, the development of rockets, however, changed everything. With the development of rocket engineering and advances in various electronics and space technology in the early 20th century, it became possible for countries to send machines, animals, and even human beings, to the outer space. However, even before the development of various sophisticated rockets and advancement in space technology currently witnessed today, space exploration had already captured the minds of many people across different societies such Chinese, who had different techniques of studying heavenly bodies.

A rocket refers to a tubular missile that can be driven to a great height or distance using the burning contents, majorly used as a signal or firework. Today, rockets have become a remarkable collection of human inventiveness that has their origin in science as well as technologies of ancient times. These rockets are natural outcomes of literally hundreds of decades of experimental research on rocket repulsion as well as missiles. The most original device that successfully used the principles that are essential to the flight of rockets was a wooden bird, manufactured in the 400 BC by a Greek Scholar named Archytas. He amused and puzzled the then citizens of a small town in Greece called Tarentum when he initially flew a pigeon made out of wood. Steam escaping from specific outlets propelled the bird built-structure even as it was being suspended on wires to enable it to fly. The pigeon applied the scientific action-reaction principle.

Three years later, after the invention of a wooden pigeon, another Greek inventor, Hero of Alexandria, invented the aeolipile, a rocket-like device that applied steam energy as repulsive energy. Hero connected a sphere on top of a water kettle with a source of fire below the kettle that heated the water into steam; the gas moved along the pipes to the sphere. He then mounted two L–shaped tubes on reverse edges of the sphere that allowed the gas to escape, by doing so, it gave thrust to the sphere and made it rotate. While history is not clear about when the first accurate rockets were invented, stories of first rockets like devices have appeared intermittently through the historical archives of different cultures. Possibly the first rockets were made by accident.

In the first century AD, the Chinese invented a simple gun powder, which was formed out of saltpeter and charcoal dust as sulfur. The gun powder was used to create explosions during festivals and big celebrations (Laichen 77). They used bamboo tubes filled with the mixture that produced the gun powder and tossed them on fires. Accidentally, some of these tubes failed to explode mid-air and alternatively skittered out of the flames when pushed by the sparks produced by the burning gunpowder and the gases. After making these observations, the Chinese invested in experimenting with gunpowder-filled tubes and attached these tubes to arrows and launched them to the sky using bows. It was from such experiments that the idea of creating a sturdy object, rocket, was initiated. The initial use of advanced rockets was in the year 1232 when the Chinese were at the probability of going to war with the Mongols.

During this war against the Mongols, the Chinese were able to repel the Mongol invaders by using fusillades of ‘’arrows of flying fire.” These fire arrows were made from a simple form of a solid-propellant rocket. The Mongols realized that they had to develop and produce their rockets to enable them to fight their enemies. They, therefore, relied on rocket engineering techniques which they amassed from the Chinese. The idea of rocket science later spread Europe, where countries used the concept to develop rockets for warfare. Between the 13th and the 15th century, different civilizations ranging from England to France developed more sophisticated and more improved forms of the gunpowder and this greatly amplified the variety of rockets. Notably, many countries across the globe were interested in rocketry science due to fear of war and invasion by other countries that already owned these lethal weapons.

By the 16th century, rockets had advanced and were used as weapons of war. However, some were still being used for the display of fireworks in events. Johann Schmidlap, a German fireworks expert, came up with the ‘’step rocket,’ a multi-staged carrier vehicle that was used for lifting fireworks to higher altitudes. A bigger skyrocket (initial stage) carried a lesser skyrocket (second stage) when the more massive rocket burned out, the smaller rocket sustained to higher altitudes before exploding into glowing cylinders. This idea has to date remained essential to all missiles that fly into outer space, because these rockets have two sections and only the smaller section completes the journey to the outer space as the larger compartment always falls off a mid-journey.

Towards the end of the 17th century, scientific details that developed modern rocket science were laid by England’s great scientist, Isaac Newton. He organized his initial thoughts on physical motion into three distinct scientific laws; that every object in a state of uniform motion will remain in that state of motion unless an external force acts on it, that energy equals to mass times acceleration, and that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. These laws were to explain how rockets function, and to explain how they can sustain the vacuum of outer space. Newton’s three scientific laws of motion set up a possible influence on the design of rockets.

In the 18th century, rockets continued to be used to success in war all over Europe and experienced revival through technological advancement. However, even with much improvements, missiles could not function as steadily as they do in the modern world today. Moving forward to the modern-day rocketry, in 1898, a Russian teacher, Konstantin projected the initial idea of space travel and exploration by the use of rockets. He recommended the application of liquid fuels in rockets to improve on the range achieved by rockets during flight. He argued that the scope of rockets was restricted only by the exhaust velocity of the escaping gases (Guery et al. 201). From his ideas and research, modern rockets were born, and for that, he has been labeled the father of modern astronautics.

In the early 20th century, Robert Goddard, an American scientist initiated practical tests and experiments in rocketry and grew concerned about how rockets could be made more proficient, and modern to achieve higher velocity and range. In 1915, he tried numerous kinds of solid fuels to quantify the exhaust velocities of their emitted gases. While testing solid fuels, he concluded that rockets could be propelled more faster by liquid fuel. It, however, became challenging to construct a liquid propellant rocket since no civilization had done that before, thus proving to be a more difficult process than building a solid-propellant rocket. Robert’s research on liquid-propellant rockets continued for many years leading to the development of bigger rockets that could also reach higher altitudes. He then invented a gyroscope structure for flight control as well as a payload partition for other scientific devices. There was also the development of a parachute recovery system that was employed to return rockets and other instruments safely back to the ground. Goddard is also accredited to have played a vital role in enhancing the performance of modern rocketry. Another great space pioneer scientist was Herman Oberth who published a rocketry book on space travel. His ideas became important because many smaller advanced rockets were developed around the world such as the V-2 rocket that was constructed by the Germans. The V-2 was smaller compared to modern days rockets and used a mixture of liquid oxygen and alcohol combusting to achieve its great thrust. It consumed closed to one ton of liquid gas in every seven seconds.

America and the Soviet Union having realized the importance of rocketry as a military weapon started advanced research and development of rocketry as well as space travel. In 1957, the Soviet Union stunned the world when they launched the first ever earth-orbiting artificial satellite which was named the Sputnik I. They closely followed this event with the unveiling of a spacecraft that carried a dog to outer space less than a month later. The United States joined the satellite race a few months later when they sent a satellite of their own scientists to the outer space. The US army launched its first successful space exploration in 1958 dubbed the Explorer I. In October the same year, the United States started its official space program called National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), which became a noncombatant agency whose primary goal was a peaceful exploration of space for the advantage of all humankind.

Years later, the exploration to space increased as more individuals were individuals were involved in such processes. Since the initial days of invention and development, rockets have developed from simple gunpowder devises into extremely giant automotive capable of making trips to outer space. In the year 2010, the Dragon spacecraft that became the first ever commercial aircraft built and operated to be recovered successfully from the orbit of the earth. The Dragon is a reusable spacecraft developed by the Space X, a private space cargo company in America. The Dragon, developed by American billionaire, Elon Musk, has changed the fortunes of America in the field of space exploration. Elon Musk has most of the times been likened to Tony Stark, a dazzling American industrialist as well as an innovator who also doubles up as the iron man during his off-work hours. Apart from being an innovation center, Space X has also featured in the world’s most prolific movie, Iron Man. The Space X Company has been revitalizing the space-tech industry with new inventions as seen in their recent advancements. For instance, the company initiated the construction of the Dragon spacecraft in 2004.

In the year 2006, Elon’s company Space X was contracted and allowed to use the Dragon spacecraft for commercial commodity supply and resupply services to the International Space Station for America’s federal space Agency, NASA. In December 2008, NASA contracted Space X to transport an overall minimum of 20,000 kgs of cargo to the International Space Station (Mazzucato and Douglas 66). The following year, Space X announced that they had arrived at the choice of phenolic-impregnated carbon ablator temperature shield material (PICA-X) which passed the passed the heat tests. Space X has in the modern day used by NASA to advance research in space travel pitting America as a leading space exploring country ahead of other European nations. As a requirement of NASA, the Space X has conducted various researches including spacecraft’s response to spurious radiation events in the outer space. In March 2015, NASA awarded Space X another three mission Commercial Resupply Service Phase 1 dubbed SpaceX CRS-13, SpaceX CRS-14 and SpaceX CRS-15 that would also cover the ISS’s cargo needs for the year 2017.

At the onset of 2016, Space X was awarded yet another further five missions under the Commercial Resupply Phase 1. This collection of tasks had SpaceX CRS-16 and SpaceX CRS-17 that was manifested for the year 2017, while SpaceX CRS-18, SpaceX CRS-19, and SpaceX CRS-20 were nationally manifested for the year 2018. The Commercial Resupply Service 2 whose contract solicitation commenced back in the year 2014 was announced and confirmed in the year 2016. Their launches and transportation will begin during this year and extend to the year 2024 earliest. Apart from Space X, which remains a significant player in transportation of cargos through space in the US, there exists other companies such as Orbital ATK and Sierra Nevada Corporation, which are equally contracted by NASA to handle its commercial space travels. With NASA’s commercial space travel contracts surmounting to a whopping 14 Billion on the minimum, the United States undoubtedly remains the largest investor in outer space travel across the globe.

Apart from handling majorly commercial cargo transport to outer space, Space X announced in 2006 that they had succeeded in constructing a prototype crew capsule that includes a tested 30-man-day life-support system. In 2010, Musk noted that the development price of crew piloted Dragon and a Falcon nine would range between $800 million and $1 Billion. With the achievement of a crewed capsule, space travel has become more advanced as many scientists can do scientific research of the outer space by being able to collect research materials and transport back to earth with much ease.

It is apparent from the above discussion that the development space rocket can be traced to thousands of years back when human beings studied the heavens and used their observations for both religious and practical purposes. Also, the numerous experiments and trials conducted by various scientists in the past, paved way for the development of sophisticated and more reliable rockets currently used in space exploration by various organizations across the globe. In conclusion, therefore, the development and success of Space X Company as one of the profitable companies in space travels not only in the US, but across the globe, is highly influenced by the researches and ideas developed in previous experiments conducted in the field of space exploration and rocket engineering. With more advancement in rocketry than it was centuries ago, and with a society that is more determined in achieving much success in space exploration, there is no doubt that the use of rockets will increase and companies like Space X will continue to be successful.

Works Cited

Guery, Jean-Francois, et al. “Solid propulsion for space applications: An updated roadmap.” Acta Astronautica 66.1-2 (2010): 201-219.

Laichen, Sun. “Chinese Gunpowder Technology and/Әi ViӾt, ca. 1390–1497.” Viet Nam: Borderless Histories (New Perspectives in Se Asian Studies) (2006): 72.

Mazzucato, Mariana, and Douglas K. R. Robinson. “Co-Creating and Directing Innovation Ecosystems? NASA’s Changing Approach to Public-Private Partnerships in Low-Earth Orbit.” Technological Forecasting and Social Change, vol. 136, 2018, pp. 166.