Basic story
The story concerns an imperial Chinese official,referred to as Wan Hu. In order to realize his space dream of reaching the heaven,he sat on a chair with 47 rockets tied to it,holding a kite in each of his hands,and flying into the sky after his servants were ordered to light the fuses to the rockets. But the rockets then exploded,which resulted in the ultimate failure,and Wan Hu was gone when the air cleared. [11] [12] There are also variations of this story.
"Wang Tu"
A precursor of the story of Wan Hu appeared in an article by John Elfreth Watkins,published in the 2 October 1909 issue of Scientific American ,which used the name Wang Tu instead of Wan Hu:
"Tradition asserts that the first to sacrifice himself to the problem of flying was Wang Tu,a Chinese mandarin of about 2,000 years B.C. Who,having had constructed a pair of large,parallel and horizontal kites,seated himself in a chair fixed between them while forty-seven attendants each with a candle ignited forty-seven rockets placed beneath the apparatus. But the rocket under the chair exploded,burning the mandarin and so angered the Emperor that he ordered a severe paddling for Wang." [13]
The possibly farcical text proceeds to describe several other fictional stories of ancient aviators. [14] A date of 2000 BCE pre-dates the emergence of writing in China by three or four centuries and pre-dates the invention of gunpowder-based rockets in China by about 3,000 years. [15]
"Wan Hu"
The legend of "Wan Hu" was widely disseminated by an unreferenced account in Rockets and Jets by American author Herbert S. Zim in 1945. [16] Another book from the same year,by George Edward Pendray,describes it as an "oft repeated tale of those early days." [17]
Early in the sixteenth century,Wan decided to take advantage of China's advanced rocket and fireworks technology to launch himself into outer space. He supposedly had a chair built with forty-seven rockets attached. On the day of lift-off,Wan,splendidly attired,climbed into his rocket chair and forty seven servants lit the fuses and then hastily ran for cover. There was a huge explosion. When the smoke cleared,Wan and the chair were gone,and was said never to have been seen again.
The legend of "Wan Hu" according to the United States House Committee on Appropriations in 2006: [18]
Chinese person's space dream could be traced to several centuries ago. Back in the 14th century,a Chinese named Wan Hu attempted to send himself into sky by lighting 47 gunpower-packed bamboo tubes tied to his chair. Although he got killed in his bold attempt,Wan has since been widely regarded as the world's first person using rockets as a flight vehicle.
According to Walter Sierra,"Though doomed to fail,the Chinese scholar Wan Hu has been universally acknowledged as the first man to try flying to space with the help of rockets. In memory,NASA named the Wan-Hoo crater on the back of the Moon after him", [19] although according to Mark Williamson most authorities consider the story apocryphal. [20] Meanwhile,some Chinese scholars believe that foreigners from several different countries in the west were unlikely to fabricate a story about ancient Chinese official flying into the sky out of thin air. The tale may be based on the stories told by European missionaries who arrived in China since the late Ming dynasty,and then passed on by word of mouth. Alternatively,these European and American scholars may have indirectly relied on records in an ancient Chinese document that has been subsequently lost. [9] According to William E. Burrows,"If it really happened,Wan Hu had the triple distinction of being the first person to ride a rocket,the first to fly on a self-propelled,heavier-than-air device,and the first rocket pilot to get killed during a test flight." [21]
