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Space is cool. You'll never be able to convince me otherwise, so don't even try. And I was lucky being born when I was — it was the most fortunate of times. A child of the 1960s, I was old enough to watch science fiction become reality.
I heard John F. Kennedy's call to put a man on the moon in 10 years when most of us thought V2 rockets were advanced. These two eyes saw the fuzzy black-and-white images of Yuri Gagarin on orbit ride and watched Alan B. Shepard launch on Freedom 7 (the first and second men in space, respectively).
As a kid and as a teenager, I knew the name of every astronaut and cosmonaut. I knew the name, sequence, and flight duration of every Mercury and Apollo mission. I could tell you who paired up in each of the unnamed Gemini missions and why Gus Grissom named his, contrary to NASA's wishes, the Molly Brown. I was lucky enough to see Armstrong set foot on the moon, in a small black-and-white image, while an excited Walter Cronkite kept saying "Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy."
You had to be there.
Yet the road to space didn't start with those brave and adventurous souls, of course. Those astronauts, scientists, thinkers, and visionaries were part of a long line stretching back into history as far as we can see.
Early Rockets
It's not exactly clear who invented the first rocket, though credit for propulsion experiments typically goes to the Greco-Egyptian scientist Hero of Alexandria. Around 50 CE, Hero came up with a rocket-like device, the aeolpile, which used steam for propulsive force.
A sphere was placed on a water kettle, and the kettle was heated to produce steam. By directing the steam first into the sphere and then into two L-shaped tubes on opposite sides of the sphere, the escaping gas gave thrust to the sphere, causing it to rotate. (Hero) It wasn't really much of a rocket — but you didn't have to be a rocket scientist to see that the principles had possibilities. The problem, of course, was how to take the fire along for the ride to maintain thrust.
The Chinese had invented gunpowder around 200 BCE. Somewhere around 600 CE, they figured rudimentary fireworks and how to use small gunpowder rockets to get the fireworks off the ground.
In 1045, Tseng Kung-Liang, a Chinese bureaucrat wrote his treatise Wu-ching Tsung-yao (Complete Compendium of Military Classics) that described a new weapon in the Chinese arsenal.
Chinese forces had developed a primitive form of rocket, basically a tube of gunpowder tied to the arrow. When the arrows landed, it started a fire. This weapon spread to the rest of the world in due course and, according to the 13th Century Syrian military historian Al-Hasan Al-Rammah, Arabs began using gunpowder-propelled fire arrows in combat around 1285. The first targets were the French forces under Louis IX during the Seventh Crusade.
The First Rocket-Man
While gunpowder and rockets were used for war and entertainment purposes, the first person we know of who tried to qualify as an astronaut was a Chinese visionary named Wan-Hu.
A minor government official, Wan-Hu decided to fly to the moon around 1500 CE, though his reasons are unknown.
Taking a wicker chair, he fastened 47 large gunpowder-filled rockets to it. Wan-Hu then settled himself, immaculately dressed, in the chair. On his command, 47 volunteers (some accounts say servants) rushed forward with lighted torches, ignited a fuse on each rocket, and presumably rushed even faster for cover. According to eyewitnesses, there was a tremendous explosion, billowing clouds of smoke and a massive stench. When the smoke cleared, Wan-Hu and his flying chair had vanished. (White Sands Missile Range)
The question of whether Wan-Hu actually made it or not has never been satisfactorily answered!
Turkish Flyers
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Hazarfen Celebi took off from the Galata tower and landed an estimated 3,200 meters away accross the Bosporus.
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For the next 130 years, no one attempted rocket-propelled flight (at least if they did, no one survived long enough to report it). Then in 1633, someone did try, a relatively enigmatic and obscure Ottoman Turk named Lagari Hasan Celebi.
Historians don't seem to know very much about Lagari Celebi himself, but his family was a prominent one known for its intellectual and scientific achievements. Hazarfen Ahmet Celebi (1609-1640) had earlier, in 1631, climbed the 183-foot-high Galata Tower in Istanbul carrying a set of artificial wings (other accounts place this in 1630 or 1638).
Hazarfen Celebi may have been inspired by an earlier Turkish scientist, Ismail Cevheri, who experimented with the idea in the 10th Century with fatal consequences. According to some sources, Celebi may have also used the studies of Leonardo da Vinci on the flight of birds in his research. He is said to have obtained da Vinci's notes from a mute Italian woman, named Francesca, who had been captured during a sea battle between the Ottomans and the Genoese. Francesca, it is said, had been working on deciphering the notes.
Eventually Hazarfen Celebi arranged his own public demonstration starting from the tower, the highest point in Istanbul, 150 meters above sea level. Launching himself into the wind, he managed to make it over the Bosporus, landing an estimated 3,200 meters from his starting point on the slopes of Usküdar. Since he started off in Europe and landed in Asia, Celebi can also be credited with the first known intercontinental flight.
The Ottoman Sultan Murad IV, one of the onlookers, congratulated Celebi personally. It was short-lived praise. The flight reportedly disturbed some of those in his court, and they pressured the Sultan into changing his mind. Celebi landed up in Algeria where he died in 1640, aged 31. (Terzioglu)
Another family member, Evilya Celebi (1611-1682), was the Ottoman Empire's most famous travel writer and observer. Among the events he recorded in the first book of his 10-volume work called the Seyahatname (Book of Travels) were those of Lagari Hasan Celebi, the first successful rocketeer.
First Successful Human Launch
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Evilya Celebi was the Ottoman Empire's most famous travel writer and observer.
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In 1633, as part of the birthday celebrations for Murad IV's daughter, Lagari Celebi stepped into a large cage with a conical top filled with about 150 okka (192 kilograms) of gunpowder. Saluting the Sultan from within the cage, Celebi then instructed his apprentices to ignite the gunpowder.
Unlike Wan-Hu's earlier attempt, this one worked. The rocket-propelled flight lasted about 20 seconds, reaching a reported altitude of some 300 meters. As the rocket began its return to earth, Celebi jumped out the cage and, using wings attached to his body, made a water landing in front of Sinan Pasha's mansion. Then, according to Eviliya, he swam from there and came up to the Sultan and paid homage to him.
Another version of Lagari Celebi's flight, perhaps more feasible, has him tying seven rockets onto his back and launching himself into the night sky off of Sararyburnu. Once spent, the rockets were removed and Celebi glided safely to earth. Presumably, his rockets are still at the bottom of the Marmara Sea.
The three Celebi's and their activities and the events preceding and following the flights were dramatized in the 1996 Turkish film Istanbul kanatlarimin altinda (Istanbul Beneath My Wings.)
It's important to remember, of course, that making grandiose claims about either Hezarfen or Lagari would be as incorrect as ignoring them. They were, simply stated, visionaries who had an idea, however imperfect or zany, to take to the skies, to journey into space, and to slip the shackles of the earth. And, while their attempts may seem a bit silly or foolhardy or reckless, and while the science and engineering behind these early attempts at rocket travel may seem obvious, we must always remember that the obvious is only yesterday's discovery.
References
Hero of Alexandria. Joseph Gouge, trans., Bennet Woodcroft, ed. "The pneumatics of Hero of Alexandria." London: Macdonald & Co., 1971.
"Rockets: History and Theory." White Sands Missile Range. Last accessed 1 July 2007.
Terzioglu, Arslan. "The First Attempts of Flight, Automatic Machines, Submarines and Rocket Technology in Turkish History." Foundation for Science Technology and Civilization. Manchester: FSTC Limited, 2007.
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