WI: For Want of a Lithuanian Rocket...

I'm talking about Kazimierz Siemienowicz.

This 17th century artillery officer and engineer was the very first in Europe to create the theory and schematics for military rockets, going as far as to create one of the first sketches of a multi-stage rocket. Siemienowicz worked in the army of the Netherlands in the last years of his life, and it's were he wrote the first part of Artis Magnae Artilleriae (The Great Art of Artillery).

The second part, which supposedly detailed the "universal pyrotechnic invention" that would ease all measurements and calculations in the field, was lost, rumored to have been taken down by gunsmith and metallurgy guilds. So yeah, the man also almost pioneered rocket science.

My question is this - what if Siemienowicz's inventions were adopted across Europe? What if we had military rockets, both useful in the battlefield and in sieges, flying across Europe in the 17th century? How would this change the subsequent history of the continent?
 
When I discussed this for unrelated TL (I'm interested in this person, because while he was born in GDL, he was born in BELARUSIAN part of GDL), I was told that rockets back then were merely toys useful for panic factor and city bombardment (pretty much what could have been created under OTL 17th century industry - level of Indian rockets inspiring Congrave later on), and the best aftereffect for this POD is standardizing artillery.
Ideas were good, but material science wasn't up to notch.
 
I'm interested in this person, because while he was born in GDL, he was born in BELARUSIAN part of GDL
Only a theory. Not confirmed at all. The Lithuanian proposal that he was an ethnic Lithuanian born in Raseiniai has just as much merit as the Belarusian one saying that he is from Vitebsk.
 
Let's don't argue about this. It's like "whose coat of arm Pagonya REALLY is" dispute.
Though the rockets WOULD be the revolution in siege artillery, I don't believe in their wide use in the field. Though rocket science not being marginalized through 17th-18th century is an interesting thing regardless of immediate after effects.
 
Were these rockets like Mysorean rockets?
As far as I can tell, they were planned to be iron-clad, using gunpowder as a propellant and some of them even multi-stage for longer flight.

So they were likely similar in composition, but bigger and planned to be used more in sieges than in the battlefield.
 
Neither metallurgy nor the actual propellant technology available in Europe sufficed to make rockets more useful than OTL Congreve rockets. At the very best, you could get horse-drawn Proto-Katyushas.

I suppose Siemienowicz could, conceivably, invent the De Laval Nozzle two hundred years early and so boost the efficiency of existing rockets. But a more useful innovation would be a better propellant--gunpowder tops out at a specific impulse of 80 s, but Rocket Candy (sucrose and potassium nitrate) can give you 130 s. I'm not sure how heavy the steel casing for such a rocket engine would need to be, using 17th-18th century metallurgy.
 
Neither metallurgy nor the actual propellant technology available in Europe sufficed to make rockets more useful than OTL Congreve rockets. At the very best, you could get horse-drawn Proto-Katyushas.
My idea basically. Congreve's level (or the level of Indian rockets he copied them from) is good.
Now focusing on artillery calculations etc could be revolutionary thing.
 
As far as I can tell, they were planned to be iron-clad, using gunpowder as a propellant and some of them even multi-stage for longer flight.

So they were likely similar in composition, but bigger and planned to be used more in sieges than in the battlefield.

Yeah, I don't think those multi-stage rockets will be a reality, so they'll be around the level of Mysorean rockets, not the Congreve ones. Presumably, they'd be used in battlefields as well.

Suffice to say, they would alter the battlefield quite a bit. Sieges would suddenly be easier for anyone who has rockets. Presuming they expand across Europe, sieges would be much avoided for the time being. And, of course, with its head start, the Commonwealth will likely grow in power, though not to the point Mysore did.
 
Siemienowicz did his work while working for the Dutch, so I'm not sure how much benefit Poland will derive. He did his best work at the time of the Chmielnicki Uprising and shortly before the Swedish Deluge, though, so it would be interesting to see what effect, if any, rocket technology has on those.
 
No matter how good rockets can be made with contemporary technology, I can see two stage rockets as only a curiosity, since they would have a very small warhead for the cost of the rocket.
 
Top