History and principles of rocket propulsion

Abstract

Human development has always been closely linked with transportation. The domestication of the horse and the invention of the wheel had a dramatic effect on early civilisation—not always beneficial. Most of the past millennium has been strongly influenced by sailing ship technology, both for war and commerce; in the twentieth century, motor vehicles and aircraft have revolutionised transport. At the beginning of the twenty-first century the rocket may be seen as the emerging revolution in transport. So far, only a few humans have actually travelled in rocket-propelled vehicles, but a surprising amount of commercial and domestic communication is now reliant on satellites. From telephone calls, through news images, to the Internet, most of our information travels from one part of the world to another, through space. The proposed return to the Moon, and new plans to send humans to Mars indicate a resurgence of interest in space exploration for the new millenium.