Modern rocketry
In 1903, high school mathematics teacher Konstantin Tsiolkovsky (1857-1935) published (The Exploration of Cosmic Space by Means of Reaction Motors), the first serious scientific work on space travel. The Tsiolkovsky rocket equation—the principle that governs rocket propulsion—is named in his honor. His work was apparently unknown outside Soviet Russia, where it inspired further research, experimentation, and the formation of the Cosmonautics Society. It remained for Robert Goddard and Hermann Oberth to independently discover the same principles.

Early rockets were also remarkably inefficient. Modern rockets were born when, after receiving a grant in 1917 from the Smithsonian Institution, Robert Goddard attached a de Laval nozzle to a rocket engine's combustion chamber, doubling the thrust and enormously raising the efficiency, giving the real possibility of practical space travel.

In 1923, Hermann Oberth (1894-1989) published Die Rakete zu den Planetenräumen ("The Rocket into Planetary Space"), a version of his doctoral thesis, after the University of Munich rejected it. This book is often credited as the first serious scientific work on the topic that received international attention. Among other contributions, Oberth suggested that stages would be more effective than carrying dead weight.

German V-2 test launch.In the mid-1920s, German scientists had begun experimenting with rockets which used liquid propellants capable of reaching relatively high altitudes and distances. A team of amateur rocket engineers had formed the Verein für Raumschiffahrt (German Rocket Society, or VfR) in 1927, and in 1931 launched a liquid propellant rocket (using oxygen and gasoline).

In 1932, the Reichswehr (which in 1935 became the Wehrmacht) began to take an interest in rocketry, seeing the possibility of using rockets as long-range artillery fire. The Wehrmacht initially funded the VfR team, but seeing that their focus was strictly scientific, created its own research team, with Hermann Oberth as a senior member. At the behest of military leaders, Wernher von Braun, at the time a young aspiring rocket scientist, joined the military (followed by two former VfR members) and developed long-range weapons for use in World War II by Nazi Germany, notably the A series of rockets, which led to the infamous V-2 rocket (initially called A4).

In 1943, production of the V-2 rocket began. The V-2 had an operational range of 300 km (185 miles) and carried a 1000 kg (2204 lb) warhead, with an amatol explosive charge. Thousands were fired at various Allied nations, mainly England, as well as Belgium and France. While uninterceptible, their crude guidance systems and single conventional warhead meant that the V-2's were largely militarily ineffective. They did kill 2,754 people in England alone, and wounding another 6,523 until the termination of the launches, and provided a lethal demonstration of the potential for guided rockets as weapons.

At the end of the war, competing Russian, British, and U.S. military and scientific crews raced to capture technology and trained personnel from the German rocket program at Peenemünde. Russia and Britain had some success, but the United States benefited most, taking a large number of German rocket scientists—many of whom were members of the Nazi Party, including von Braun—from Germany to the United States as part of Operation Paperclip. There the same rockets which would have been destined to rain down on Britain had the war continued were used by scientists for other uses.

After the war, rockets were used to study high-altitude conditions, by radio telemetry of temperature and pressure of the atmosphere, detection of cosmic rays, and further research. This continued under von Braun and the others, who were destined to become part of the U.S. scientific complex.

Rockets remain a popular military weapon. The use of large battlefield rockets of the V-2 type has given way to guided missiles, but rockets are often used by helicopters and light aircraft for ground attack, being more powerful than machine guns, but without the recoil of a heavy cannon. In the 1950s there was a brief vogue for air-to-air rockets, including the formidable AIR-2 'Genie' nuclear rocket, but by the early 1960s these had largely been abandoned in favor of air-to-air missiles.

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