The best road to progress is freedom's road. - JFK
Texas
A depiction of the "long serpent" rocket launcher from the 11th century book Wujing Zongyao. The holes in the frame are designed to keep the fire arrows separate.
1650 - Artis Magnae Artilleriae pars prima ("Great Art of Artillery, the First Part") is printed in Amsterdam, about a year before the death of its author, Kazimierz Siemienowicz.
1798 - Tipu Sultan, the King of the state of Mysore in India, develops and uses iron rockets against the British Army (see Mysorean rockets).
1806 - Claude Ruggieri, an Italian living in France, launched animals on rockets and recovered them using parachutes. He was prevented from launching a child by police.[2]
1952 - Wernher von Braun discusses the technical details of a manned exploration of Mars in The Mars Project.
1953 - Colliers Magazine publishes a series of articles on man's future in space, igniting the interest of people around the world. The series includes numerous articles by Ley and von Braun, illustrated by Chesley Bonestell.
1957 - Launch of the first ICBM, the USSR's R-7 (8K71), known to NATO as the SS-6 Sapwood.
1957 - The USSR launches Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite.
1958 - The U.S. launches Explorer 1, the first American artificial satellite, on a Jupiter-C rocket.
1958 - US launches their first ICBM, the Atlas-B (the Atlas-A was a test article only).
1961 - the USSR launches Vostok 1, Yuri Gagarin reached a height of 327 km above Earth and was the first man to orbit earth.
1963 - The USSR launches Vostok 6, Valentina Tereshkova was the first woman (and first civilian) to orbit earth. She remained in space for nearly three days and orbited the earth 48 times.
1963 - US X-15 rocket-plane, the first reusable manned spacecraft (suborbital) reaches space, pioneering reusability, carried launch and glide landings.
1965 - USSR Proton rocket, highly successful launch vehicle with notable payloads, Salyut 6 & Salyut 7, Mir & ISS components
1965 - Robert Salked investigates various single stage to orbit spaceplane concepts[3][4][5]
1966 - USSR Luna 9, the first soft landing on the Moon
1966 - USSR launches Soyuz spacecraft, longest-running series of spacecraft, eventually serving Soviet, Russian and International space missions.
1969 - US Apollo 11, first men on the Moon, first lunar surface extravehicular activity.
1981 - US space shuttle pioneers reusability and glide landings
2014 - First booster rocket returning from an orbital trajectory to achieve a zero-velocity-at-zero-altitude propulsivevertical landing. The first-stage booster of Falcon 9 Flight 9 made the first successful controlled ocean soft touchdown of a liquid-rocket-engine orbital booster on April 18, 2014.[8][9] An attempt to repeat the soft landing on a solid-surface floating landing platform is planned for April 2015.[10][11]
^Clark, Stephen (2008-09-28). "Sweet Success at Last for Falcon 1 Rocket". Spaceflight Now. Retrieved 2014-11-30. the first privately developed liquid-fueled rocket to successfully reach orbit.