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Comment by nickff | Hacker News Reader

Humans figured out rockets before steam engines and electricity. Rockets being invented in 13th-century China, while the steam engine was only invented in 1606 and made useful in 1712. Electricity has a much more complicated history, and you could make the case that it was discovered before either of the other two, or invented later.

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Before electricity, yes. Not before steam. The principle of a steam engine existed in ancient Greece.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeolipile

Most likely the reason it remained a toy, rather than being put to productive use, was the abundance of slave labor.

> Most likely the reason it remained a toy, rather than being put to productive use, was the abundance of slave labor.

This is something that get said a lot, but it misses technological and socio-ebergetic factors as well:

1. at that time metallurgy was very rudimentary, compared to how it was in the late 18th century. Most they wouldn't have been able to craft an efficient steam machine back then even if they tried very hard.

2. They also didn't use coal (I don't even know I'd they knew it), which makes fuel (wood) really expensive and also removes the self-reinforcing retroaction where you can use the steam machine to mine more coal and really contributed to the exponential nature of the industrial revolution.

They must've known coal and oil, it was present naturally close to surface or straight up on it in places, still is.

The whole digging and drilling business, though - that's something else entirely.

And pumping out the water, helpful to have a steam engine to lift all that mass out of your mine.

And metallurgy support to actually build something more than a toy.

If by steam engine you mean ‘kettle with no pressure valves mounted on an axle’, yes. But the aeolipile was in no way a functional engine that could do useful work.

13th-century Chinese rockets weren't landing on the moon either so both are simplifications.

13 century Chinese rockets were useful weapons or war though.

Other people have mentioned that the metallurgy that was known in Britain at the time useful steam engines were developed was dramatically more advanced than what the makers of ancient stuff like the Aeolipile had.

A fun fact is that the reason we developed the metallurgy required to put high pressure gasses to work inside cylinders was in large part due to work on improving cannon manufacture.

Early cannons exploded a lot, but a cannon which occasionally explodes is a lot better at being a cannon than a steam engine that occasionally explodes is at being a steam engine. Having a "minimal viable product" for a cannon is much simpler than for a steam engine so they were able to iterate on the technology.

Ah, fair point! I guess I was unaware of the range of things that are covered by the name 'rocket'

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