On March 16, , a platoon of American soldiers brutally kills as many as unarmed civilians at My Lai, one of a cluster of small villages located near the northern coast of South Vietnam. The crime, which was kept secret for nearly two years, later became known as the My The United States Military Academy—the first military school in the United States—is founded by Congress for the purpose of educating and training young men in the theory and practice of military science.
Military Academy is often simply Sign up now to learn about This Day in History straight from your inbox. Over a span of just 12 months beginning in April , the duo of Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell enjoyed a string of four straight hits with some of the greatest love songs ever recorded at Motown Records.
Sadly, only the first two of those four hits were released while Tammi Hawthorne was born in Salem, Massachusetts, in Although the infamous Salem witch trials had taken place more than years earlier, the events still hung over the On March 16, , after a three-month-long criminal trial in Los Angeles Superior Court, a jury acquits Robert Blake, star of the s television detective show Baretta, of the murder of his year-old wife, Bonny Lee Bakley.
Blake, who was born Mickey Gubitosi in in New As part of his continuing effort to put pressure on the leftist Sandinista government in Nicaragua, President Ronald Reagan orders over 3, U. As with so many of the other actions taken against Jet vents are designed on an angle, making the rocket spin, much like a bullet, making them more stable and accurate. Russian schoolteacher Konstantin Tsiokovsky puts forward the idea of using rockets for space exploration.
He suggests liquid propellants would gain greater range. American Robert H Goddard flies a rocket powered by liquid oxygen and gasoline. Goddard goes on to build bigger rockets and higher rockets. They burn a mixture of oxygen and alcohol at a rate of 1 ton every 7 seconds. This is the first rocket capable of reaching space.
With the help of captured German rocket engineers, the United States begins using V-2 rockets as sounding rockets to make measurements of the atmosphere at high altitudes. Little was known of the atmosphere before this. A variety of medium and long-range missiles are developed and become the starting point of the US space programme. Missiles like Redstone, Atlas and Titan would eventually launch astronauts into space. The Soviet Union launches the first Earth-orbiting artificial satellite.
And, because of powerful and advanced rockets, the Voyager 1 spacecraft was able to leave our solar system and reach interstellar space. Several companies in many countries now manufacture uncrewed rockets — the United States, India, Europe and Russia, to name a few — and routinely send military and civilian payloads into space. And scientists and engineers are continually working toward developing even more sophisticated rockets. Stratolaunch, the aerospace design company backed by Paul Allen and Burt Rutan, aims to launch satellites using civilian aircraft.
SpaceX and Blue Origin have also developed reusable first-stage rockets; SpaceX now has reusable Falcon 9 rockets that routinely make cargo runs to the International Space Station.
Experts predict that rockets of the future will be able to carry bigger satellites into space and may be able to carry multiple satellites at the same time, the Los Angeles Times reported.
These rockets could use new composite materials, advances in electronics or even artificial intelligence to perform their work. Future rockets may also use different fuels — such as methane — that are healthier for the environment than the more traditional kerosene that is used in rockets today.
Join our Space Forums to keep talking space on the latest missions, night sky and more! And if you have a news tip, correction or comment, let us know at: community space. Elizabeth Howell is a contributing writer for Space.
She is the author or co-author of several books on space exploration. Elizabeth holds a Ph. She also holds a bachelor of journalism degree from Carleton University in Canada, where she began her space-writing career in Besides writing, Elizabeth teaches communications at the university and community college level, and for government training schools.
Even with Congreve's work, the accuracy of rockets still had not improved much from the early days. The devastating nature of war rockets was not their accuracy or power, but their numbers.
During a typical siege, thousands of them might be fired at the enemy. All over the world, rocket researchers experimented with ways to improve accuracy. An Englishman, William Hale, developed a technique called spin stabilization. In this method, the escaping exhaust gases struck small vanes at the bottom of the rocket, causing it to spin much as a bullet does in flight.
Variations of the principle are still used today. Rockets continued to be used with success in battles all over the European continent. However, in a war with Prussia, the Austrian rocket brigades met their match against newly designed artillery pieces.
Breech-loading cannon with rifled barrels and exploding warheads were far more effective weapons of war than the best rockets. Once again, rockets were relegated to peacetime uses. Modern Rocketry Begins In , a Russian schoolteacher, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky , proposed the idea of space exploration by rocket.
In a report he published in , Tsiolkovsky suggested the use of liquid propellants for rockets in order to achieve greater range. Tsiolkovsky stated that the speed and range of a rocket were limited only by the exhaust velocity of escaping gases.
For his ideas, careful research, and great vision, Tsiolkovsky has been called the father of modern astronautics. Early in the 20th century, an American, Robert H. Goddard , conducted practical experiments in rocketry. He had become interested in a way of achieving higher altitudes than were possible for lighter-than-air balloons.
It was a mathematical analysis of what is today called the meteorological sounding rocket. Goddard's earliest experiments were with solid-propellant rockets. In , he began to try various types of solid fuels and to measure the exhaust velocities of the burning gases. While working on solid-propellant rockets, Goddard became convinced that a rocket could be propelled better by liquid fuel.
No one had ever built a successful liquid-propellant rocket before. It was a much more difficult task than building solid- propellant rockets.
Fuel and oxygen tanks, turbines, and combustion chambers would be needed. In spite of the difficulties, Goddard achieved the first successful flight with a liquid- propellant rocket on March 16, Fueled by liquid oxygen and gasoline, the rocket flew for only two and a half seconds, climbed By today's standards, the flight was unimpressive, but like the first powered airplane flight by the Wright brothers in , Goddard's gasoline rocket was the forerunner of a whole new era in rocket flight.
Goddard's experiments in liquid-propellant rockets continued for many years. His rockets became bigger and flew higher. He developed a gyroscope system for flight control and a payload compartment for scientific instruments. Parachute recovery systems were employed to return rockets and instruments safely. Goddard, for his achievements, has been called the father of modern rocketry.
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