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Video: How the rocket was invented 400 years before the flight into space, or Secrets of a medieval manuscript of a rocket science pioneer
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
Humanity still remembers the times when the flight to the moon was considered something from the realm of fantasy. Such dreamers were considered, at best, city madmen. At worst, they were burned at the stake. Today, spaceships not only actively "plow the expanses of our Universe", but also deliver cargo, astronauts and space tourists to Earth's orbit. Few people know that even 400 years before the first man flew into space, a multistage rocket had already been invented. Scientists have discovered a mysterious ancient manuscript with detailed calculations and blueprints for rocketry.
Mysterious manuscript
When, in August 1996, the world heard the news that traces of viable bacteria had been found on Mars, the euphoria was enormous. Humanity immediately began preparations for flights to the red planet. These plans would never have been destined to come true without those eccentrics who at different times piously believed that man would conquer space. One of these was Hermann Obert. He is even called the "father of space travel." Obert laid the foundations of scientific astronautics and rocketry in his works Rocket and Planetary Space (1923) and Paths to Space Navigation (1929). But there is another, undeservedly forgotten, researcher who, like Obert, was far ahead of his time: Konraad Haas.
In 1961, an amazing discovery was made in Sibiu (Romania). A professor at the University of Bucharest found a mysterious manuscript in the old city archives. Subsequently, it was named the Sibiu manuscript. She represented about 450 pages filled with drawings and calculations. It was incredibly accurate technical data on artillery, ballistics and detailed descriptions of multistage missiles. The most interesting thing about the discovery is that these texts were created in the middle of the 16th century. The author of this stunning document was a brilliant Austrian military engineer named Konrad Haas.
Who is Konrad Haas?
It has been undeservedly forgotten these days. Haas's name or his achievements are hardly mentioned in reference books. Unfortunately, very little information about the outstanding scientist has survived. To begin with, Konrad Haas was not a native Transylvanian Saxon at all. He just lived there. Most likely, the future engineer was born in 1509 in Dornbach, near Vienna. Konrad moved to Transylvania at the age of twenty. At that time, this land was part of the Austrian Empire. Here he began service in the imperial army of the Habsburgs under the command of King Ferdinand I.
In 1551, Haas was invited to his service by the Grand Prince of Transylvania, Stephen Bathory. Konrad arrived in Germanstadt (now the Romanian city of Sibiu), where he began to lead the military arsenal. During his service, Haas began writing what scientists now consider to be the earliest handbook on rocketry known to science. This work was written in German. Its name is translated as "How to make a good rocket that can independently fly into the heavens."The manuscript is devoted to a detailed description of innovative weapons technologies, including the principle of operation of multistage missiles.
Haas wrote his book on rocket science between 1529 and 1556. Of the 282 spreads of the treatise, about 209 are devoted to rocketry and the use of rockets. The scientist describes in detail the technical aspects of the rocket design, explains the principle of its operation. The manuscript contains a description of a large number of missile types. There is also an image of a multistage rocket. This is in the 16th century !!! The book even contains a sketch of a spaceship. He is depicted as a flying house.
The treatise presents Haas's own military developments. These are different types of missiles that should be fired at the enemy. It's amazing that the engineer thought about combining several missiles of the same power and about their aerodynamic stabilization using delta stabilizers! The scientist paid much attention to the problem of fuel. Haas experimented with a variety of fuels to get the right combination.
Before the Haas manuscripts were found in 1961, science attributed the first description of a multistage rocket to the Polish scientist Kazimierz Semenovich. His work was published in a 1650 treatise Artis Magnae Artilleriae Pars Prima. Semenovich's book is illustrated with drawings on copper plates. They are of extremely high quality for the time and demonstrate a very close attention to detail. Many of the illustrations look suspiciously like Haas' drawings. Among them is a multistage rocket.
Both scientists describe rocketry techniques. Both Haas and Semenovich give a detailed and qualitative description of a cylindrical thrust chamber filled with propellant fuel. Its conical hole is designed so that the combustion area increases gradually, and, accordingly, the power grows. This design is still used in modern rockets today.
Konrad Haas's legacy
Summing up, we can say that Konrad Haas owns the following design solutions and developments:
Konrad Haas actually developed a super-powerful weapon that was supposed to kill. Despite this, he secretly believed that life is the main human value. The scientist was a real humanist. The last paragraph of his manuscript speaks volumes about this. There the scientist wrote:
Nowadays, there are also brilliant engineers, whose gaze is directed far into the future. Their ideas seem strange to many, they are much ahead of their time. For example, Elon Musk. Read our article about him and find out what secrets are hidden by the biography of an outstanding engineer.null
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