Illustration courtesy of United States Civil Air Patrol. The characters in this drawing are not characters of any language, and the person standing is in ancient Japanese attire.

Wàn Hǔ or Wàn Hù (萬虎 or 萬戶) (c. 1500) was a minor Chinese official of the Ming dynasty and perhaps (though not likely) the world's first astronaut. Image File history File links courtesy of http://history. ... Image File history File links courtesy of http://history. ... Ming Dynasty The Ming Dynasty (Chinese: 明朝; Hanyu Pinyin: ) was the ruling dynasty of China from 1368 to 1644. ... U.S. Space Shuttle astronaut Bruce McCandless II using a manned maneuvering unit (MMU) outside the Challenger in 1984. ...

According to legend, early in the 16th century, Wan decided to take advantage of China's advanced rocket and fireworks technology to launch himself into outer space. (15th century - 16th century - 17th century - more centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 16th century was that century which lasted from 1501 to 1600. ... A Redstone rocket, part of the Mercury program A rocket is a vehicle, missile or aircraft which obtains thrust by the reaction to the ejection of fast moving exhaust gas from within a rocket engine. ... The Sydney Harbour Bridge and the Sydney Opera House illuminated under New Years Eve Fireworks 2005 A fireworks event (also called a fireworks display or fireworks show) is a spectacular display of the effects produced by firework devices on various occasions. ... Layers of Atmosphere - not to scale (NOAA) Outer space, also called just space, refers to the relatively empty regions of the Universe outside the atmospheres of celestial bodies. ...

He 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. He was never seen again.

The Discovery Channel's show "MythBusters" attempted to recreate Wan Hu's flight using materials that would have been available to him. The chair exploded on the launch pad, with the crash test dummy sitting in it suffering severe burns. An attempt was also made using a chair with modern rockets attached, but it barely made it off the ground before going out of control. It was determined that small rockets that can be strapped to a chair cannot provide enough thrust to significantly lift the chair, let alone achieve escape velocity. Discovery Channel is a property of Discovery Communications primarily packaged as a network entertainment brand distributed in virtually every pay-television market in the world. ... MythBusters is an American science television program on Discovery Channel starring Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman, two special-effects experts who set out to test the validity of timeless myths and urban legends of popular culture. ... Hybrid III is the de facto standard crash test dummy. ... Thrust is a reaction force described quantitatively by Newtons Second and Third Law. ... In physics, for a given gravitational field and a given position, the escape velocity is the minimum speed an object without propulsion, at that position, needs to have to move away indefinitely from the source of the field, as opposed to falling back or staying in an orbit within a...

NASA named the Wan-Hoo crater of the Moon after him. NASA logo Listen to this article · (info) This audio file was created from an article revision dated 2005-09-01, and does not reflect subsequent edits to the article. ... Wan-Hoo is a lunar crater that is located on the Moons far side, and it can not be viewed directly from the Earth. ... This is a list of the craters on the Moon. ...

The Origin of Wan Hoo

The legend of Wan Hoo was not recorded in any Chinese history book. It was first mentioned in Rockets and Jets written by American author Herbert S. Zim in 1945. It was then introduced into China via translation, and that is why what exact Chinese name this legendary person had (萬虎 or 萬戶) as mentioned above could not be determined just based on the pronunciation. This story is more an urban legend invented a half century ago, than a Chinese history record. 1945 (MCMXLV) was a common year starting on Monday (link will take you to calendar). ... Urban legends are a kind of folklore consisting of stories often thought to be factual by those circulating them (see rumor). ...

In a show about inventions on Chinese Central Television called Tian Gong Kai Wu, Wan Hoo was said to be able to lift himself only by a foot using those rockets. In most Chinese versions of Wan Hoo's story, he is described as a martyr of space travel who was burnt to death because of the explosion caused by those rockets, instead of the first astronaut in history. Those stories fit perfectly with the result of MythBusters' experiment. China Central Television or Chinese Central Television, or CCTV (Chinese: 中国中央电视台 pinyin: Zhōngguó Zhōngyāng Diànshìtái), is the major broadcast television network in Mainland China. ... Historically, a martyr is a person who dies for their convictions or religious faith, such as during the persecution of early Christians in the Roman Empire. ...

External links

• NASA list