In 1997, the visionary Russian rocket scientist Constantine Sielkovsky discovered an equation that governed how rockets worked.

His equation, which was independently discovered by several other rocket scientists, immmunably governs how we can send rockets into space.

The variables in his equation have determined everything surrounding spaceflight and rocketry since its inception and will for the foreseeable future.

Learn more about the tyranny of the rocket equation on this episode of Everything Everywhere

Daily. Book your ticket to happiness with Sun Express Airlines. The Rockets have been around in some form for centuries. If you remember back to my

episode on Gunpowder, the Chinese were using rockets and warfare and

for fireworks for about a thousand years.

While rockets were a known thing, they left scientists baffled as to how they worked.

They weren't being pushed like a sailboat, and they weren't using friction with the the ground like walking or a horse pulling a wagon.

The late 19th and early 20th century saw several people around the world independently tackle

the problem.

The first person recognized to have solved the physics behind rockets

and therefore would get credit as the first rocket scientist is

Constantine Seylkovsky.

Seylkovsky realized that rockets worked because Newton's third law stipulated that for every

action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Rockets moved forward because they were

expelling something else from behind.

The principle by which rockets moved was demonstrated by Seelkovsky with a simple thought experiment.

Suppose that you were in a boat in the middle of a pond.

The boat had no sail or no oars to paddle. You were basically stuck in the middle of a pond with no way to move.

However, on the boat you did have a pile of heavy rocks. You could get yourself to shore by throwing the rocks off the back of the boat,

not dropping them into the water but throwing them horizontally. This would give the boat

...