Yesterday, May 30 2020, Nasa and SpaceX launched Crew Dragon Demo 2 Mission to the ISS. I know this is not a blog about space exploration, but I decided to talk a little about this fact because one of the most important things that powers this two areas is the same - Rockets! The fuel is not the same, but the principle of this milenar technology that started about a thousand years ago is.
The ambitions of conquest the space are not from 50/60 years ago. Early in 1914, Robert Goddard created the world's first liquid fueled rocket (oxygen + gasoline) and made a lot of studies and experiments about high altitude rockets.
Some years later, during the WWII, Wernher von Braun created the A4 Rocket, mostly known as the V2 Rocket, a powerful missile that reached a range of 320km and a velocity of about 5700km/h. After the war, von Braun went to the U.S. and started developing ballistic missiles and finally was joined NASA, contributting to the creation of the Saturn V rocket that carried man to the Moon. As a curiosity, the first picture of Earth we have from Space was taken onboard a V2 Rocket in 24 october 1946!
Many years passed until our days and many things have evolved in the context of Space Exploration, some travels to the moon, the ISS, the Space Shuttle spacecraft and hundreads of satellites deployed to our skies but yesterday we made history again with the liftoff of the first private company made rocket (SpaceX Falcon-9) successfully carrying humans to the Space aboard the Crew Dragon!
Picture from the SpaceX's Twitter account.
Even though it's a very ancient technology, Rockets are still powering the humanity to reach it's highest dreams!
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