Lets say the wright brothers were testing the first manned rocket into space instead of the first plane?

Question

In this time-line with historical events much more different from our time-line, how advanced do you think there space technology would be right now, if the first manned flight into space happened back in the same time period that the wright brothers flew there first plane, mind you this is just a thought experiment so don't take the question too seriously.

Answer 1

Imagine, more than two thousand years ago, the Chinese, riding on the heels of taming the great river system go on to build rockets rather than unending bureaucracy. By now, we'd be sending rockets all over the solar system. You'd need yet another flight back from Mars, just to get a status report. Because without radio or electronics, the intrepid navigators would be in high demand - as most flights would end in disaster.  And the name Ho Gi Wang would be a household name.  The first person to make it back from the surface of the Moon.

Answer 2

The wars are responsible for how advanced aviation has gotten so I am not sure it can translate... The better question is, where would aviation be without WWI, WWII, Korea and Vietnam??

Not as would be my answer...

Answer 3

Think about it another way.... Imagine the "Dark Ages" never happened, and that the "scientific method" put forth by the Greeks actually went forward without interruption.  We'd be 400 to 500 *years* ahead in technology than we are now - the first manned moon shot could've been made around the year 1500 or so; Imagine if it was Christopher Columbus on the first manned landing on the moon, and that had been 500 years ago... where would we be now?

Answer 4

We'd all be complaining about the price of rocket fuel at the space-pump right now.

Answer 5

Your mental perambulations must confirm to certain logical steps first.

First he has to be airborne before man thinks of going beyond the air above him. Human thinking is always incremental. Every thought has its preceding thought that man has mastered and uses as the spring board to his next higher mental launch.

There were umpteen efforts to get airborne and to fly before Orville & Wilbur Wright or Alberto Santos-Dumont; but every one of them ended in failure after some airborne seconds and not sustained flight. What Wright brothers did is 'Control over the flight dynamics' thus sustaining flight under control.

Simultaneousely were minds working on departing vertically upward. Tsiolkovsky and Goddard were striving in this line.