A rocket in the sky of Romania in .... 1529 ?

Yes, you did read well at ....... I confess that I myself have reread this mention in Robert Charroux's book several times and have done research in parallel to see if this fact was mentioned in other reliable sources...

The first rockets inventions

Until recently, I had learned that the functioning of the space rocket had been imagined only in 1893 by the Russian Konstantin Tsiolkovski; that the first rocket had been launched in 1926 by the American Robert Goddard to reach (only) 12 m of height and 96 km/h; or that it is in 1957 that the first satellite Sputnik 1 had been put in orbit by a rocket by the Russian Sergey Korolev... Far be it from me to imagine a flying machine, especially for space, before all this, and even less in the Renaissance period!

Of course, I was familiar with Vinci's drawings of various machines: but in this case, the project as well as the experience told were beyond anything!

The invention in question would have been, in fact, a three-stage rocket with solid fuel, at the take-off of which thousands of witnesses were present,

However, considered as an "unimportant" fact, the historians put it under the carpet so much so that it was completely forgotten! You amaze me! Another story that disturbs the well established narratives and our pseudo-progress since we deigned to leave our animal skins and get out of our Cro Magnon caves.

Conrad Haas and the Sibiu manuscript

We owe this invention to Conrad Haas and its "discovery" to Professor of Science and Technology Doru Todericiu, from the University of Bucharest (1961). Conrad Haas (1529-1569) was "maistre de feux", i.e. military engineer for the Kingdom of Hungary and the Principality of Transylvania.

Indeed, he found an old manuscript (called the Sibiu manuscript) consisting of 3 notebooks (450 pages written in German) which were bound into a single work in 1570 and in which Conrad Haas reports on his invention and the experience of its launch in 1555, by means of a "flying lance" with a large range.

It was a rocket with 3 propulsion stages of different diameters, one of which was nested on the other. The solid fuel was composed, it seems, of specially studied powders, but could be replaced by a mixture based on ethyl acetate (obtained, according to the manuscript, from vinegar and alcohol), ammonia (extracted from urine), acetic acid and other chemical bodies.

Conrad Haas rocket project source Ernst Wagner: Ernst Wagner: History of the Saxons in Transylvania. Wort und Welt Verlag, Thaur near Innsbruck, 1990 public domain

This manuscript is, in fact, a theoretical treatise on the construction of different types of weapons, Conrad Haas lists his rocket inventions (which we report below), details the combination of fireworks with weapons, the creation of fuel mixtures to create a liquid fuel and shows that he had even imagined a flying house, a sort of ancestor of the cosmonaut's cabin! He even proposed a solution to the problem of the lift and the guidance of the rockets, with the help of "delta" wings...

The rockets listed in the Sibiu manuscript

This list is as follows:

• 1529: 2-stage rocket (with 2 ignition stages);

• 1529 : 3 stage fuse ;

• 1529 : rocket battery ;

• 1536 : flying house ;

• 1555: experimentation of the principle of the ignitions necessary in the rocket with several stages;

• 1555: use of the stabilization fins in the shape of delta.

Engravings accompany and illustrate the work. Here is what the two rockets that flew in 1529 in the sky of Sibiu in Romania looked like:

Conrad Haas, diagram of rockets from the Sibiu manuscript source Robert Charroux, public domain

Prior to this discovery by Professor Doru Todericiu, some 'insider' historians had heard of Johann Schmidlap, known as a 16th century Bavarian fireworks manufacturer and pioneer in propulsion technology, who was thought to have been the first to experiment with two and three stage rockets around 1590.

Further details about rockets were also published by Kazimierz Siemienowicz, a Polish artillery specialist, in his 1650 treatise Artis Magnae Artilleriae Pars Prima.

The authentic documents are deposited in the Sibiu Museum (Sibiu Varia II 374)

Sources : Robert Charroux, Le livre de ses livres, chapitre "A la recherche de l'insolite", pp. 443-445

Wikipedia, article Conrad Haas

Article Le manuscrit de Sibiu : un texte vieux de 500 ans qui décrit des fusées à plusieurs étages