By Molly Gray!!
The history of rocket vehicles goes back to the 13th century in China. From there developments occurred in Mongolia, India, Britain, America and Russia among many others.
The first rocket like device was invented around 100BC by a Greek named Hero of Alexandria. This device was called an aeolipile. It consisted of a sphere mounted on a water kettle. A fire beneath the kettle turned the water to steam, which then travelled through pipes to the sphere and was expelled through two L-shaped pipes that caused the sphere to rotate. The first date we know true rockets were used was the year 1232, however it is believed possible that the Chinese had primitive rocket like devices before this. At this time the Chinese were at war with the Mongols.
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During one of the battles, the battle of Kai-Keng, the Chinese managed to repel the Mongol invaders by using "arrows of flying fire." These fire-arrows were a simple form of a solid-propellant rocket. A tube, capped at one end, was filled with gunpowder. The other end was left open and the tube was attached to a long stick. There were many reports of rocket experiments all through the 13th to 15 centuries. For instance According to one ancient legend, a Chinese official named Wan-Hoo attempted a flight to the moon using a large wicker chair to which were fastened 47 large rockets. Forty seven assistants, each armed with torches, rushed forward to light the fuses. In a moment there was a tremendous roar accompanied by billowing clouds of smoke. When the smoke cleared, the flying chair and Wan-Hu were gone.
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Modern Rocketry got started in 1903, when a Russian school teacher published a report suggesting the use of liquid propellants in rockets to increase the range of the rockets. He stated that "the speed and range of a rocket were limited by the exhaust velocity of escaping gases." The first liquid fuel rocket was developed and launched by an American named Robert H. Goddard in 1926.
In 1937, a group German engineers and scientists assembled on the shores of the Baltic Sea in Peenemunde . There, under the directorship of Wernher von Braun, they developed most advanced rocket of its time, the German V-2 Missile