I thought that was Mysorea? ….
@Boris Gudenuf ?
Goddard did the liquid fuel thing and other refinements but first self propelled?
By definition a rocket is "self-propelled" - it carries its own fuel and oxidizing agent with it, unlike either a conventional gun projectile or a jet.
That also means that the first Rockets were gunpowder-propelled, since gunpowder includes its own oxidizing agent in the formula (also why gunpowder will explode under water if you can apply heat faster than the water carries it away). The Sultan of Mysore had iron gunpowder rockets, used against the British in the "Mysore Wars" of the 1760s (they inspired one Congreve to develop the British 'Congreve Rocket'. one of the most amazingly inaccurate ranged weapons ever used) but the technology was based on Chinese gunpowder and rocket technology from much, much earlier.
As early as 969 CE the Chinese during the Song Dynasty describe gunpowder rockets used for fireworks, signalling, and incendiary devices, and the
Huo Long Jing of 1395 CE describing gunpowder devices 'in use since (1355)' includes rockets and rocket launchers as standard weapons for Chinese forces.
Engineering an innovation as well. England developed the steam engine, but America developed the bent water-tube boiler which increased power in the same footprint by about 50%....America built the first self propelled rockets, but the Germans took them to a new level and then America and the Russians took that tech and went to space....The more I think about it the more I agree with you. A research district should function better if there was matching industry and not just a bunch of research districts....
And England developed the steam engine from both English and French experiments: Denis Papin in France built the first model steam piston engine back in 1690, before even the primitive Newcomen Engine was developed in England. What 'developed' the Steam Engine was not only Watt's condenser, but also Wilkinson's new boring technology that allowed pistons to be a tight enough fit in the cylinder that most of the steam didn't simply leak out, and the American further development of more efficient boilers owed much of its potential to the precision machining techniques developed by Maudslay and Whitworth in England, which allowed truly precise and identical parts of all kinds to be produced. This had applications as different as better Steam Engines, Babbage's Difference Engine, and mass produced cheap, affordable pistols, rifles, clocks, sewing machines and typewriters with interchangeable parts.
- Which is part of also saying that the 19th century (Industrial) Mass Armies with breechloading rifles were simply not possible until the industrial techniques to mass-produce the weapons had been developed. This is even more true in the 20th century (Modern Era and later) where the 'Apex' military technologies also require massive investment in industrial facilities to use the research. Only a few countries could build Battleships - not because they didn't know how, but because they didn't have the massive steel, power, artillery and other industrial plants to build them. The same holds true for medium tanks in WWII (only built by 7 countries, and 2 of those used components built elsewhere), Main Battle Tanks since the 1980s, and jet aircraft: many of those being 'built' today are composed of components built in a very few industrial centers.
Neither Humankind nor Civilization address the Industrial or manufacturing installations required to make use of some of the research available in their Tech Trees, especially when the technology is first discovered. Today almost any country with any kind of metals industry can manufacture automobiles, but over a century ago, before WWI broke out, only 5 countries could produce automobiles or trucks in any numbers: Britain, USA, Germany, France, and Italy. The industrial base required was simply not available anywhere else.
