View Shopping Cart Your Famous Chinese Account Shopping Help Famous Chinese Homepage China Chinese Chinese Culture Chinese Restaurant & Chinese Food Travel to China Chinese Economy & Chinese Trade Chinese Medicine & Chinese Herb Chinese Art
logo
Search
March 8, 2014
Table of Contents
1 Introduction
Wan Hu

Wikipedia

 
<div style="float:right">Image:Wan Hu.gif|Illustration courtesy of United States Civil Air Patrol<br><center>Illustration of Wan Hu's takeoff.<br />Media:Wan_Hu_large.png|Larger version</center></div>

W?n H? (萬戶) (c. 1500) was a minor China|Chinese official of the Ming dynasty and perhaps the world's first astronaut.

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.

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, possibly confirming the story. An attempt was also made using a chair with modern rockets attached, this barely made it off the ground before going out of control.

NASA named the Wan-Hoo crater|Wan-Hoo List of Lunar craters|crater of the Moon after him.



  • http://lunar.arc.nasa.gov/printerready/science/geography_items/carters/craters_wxyz.html NASA list


et:Wan Hu

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Wan Hu".


Last Modified:   2005-04-13


Search
All informatin on the site is © FamousChinese.com 2002-2005. Last revised: January 2, 2004
Are you interested in our site or/and want to use our information? please read how to contact us and our copyrights.
To post your business in our web site? please click here. To send any comments to us, please use the Feedback.
To let us provide you with high quality information, you can help us by making a more or less donation: