Wan Hu

Wan Hu is a figure of spaceflight legend, described as a Chinese official of the early Ming dynasty who tried to rise into the sky on a chair driven by rockets. The tale is told as the first attempt to use rocket power for human flight, and he is sometimes called the world's first astronaut. The standard account has him seated between two kites with 47 rockets fixed to the frame, while servants lit every fuse at once; after an explosion he was gone. The story first appears in American publications of the early twentieth century, with no known earlier Chinese account, and an earlier version used the name Wang Tu. Some Chinese sources say Wan Hu was a court title and that his real name was Tao Chengdao, and that he died in 1390. Joseph Needham judged the story dubious, while Li Chengzhi argued it may rest on oral tradition or a lost document. The International Astronomical Union named the lunar crater Wan-Hoo after him in 1970. This entry presents him as a legend, not as a documented engineer.