The Aus­tri­an mil­i­tary engi­neer Con­rad Haas was a man ahead of his time — indeed, about 400 years ahead, con­sid­er­ing that he was work­ing on rock­ets aimed for out­er space back in the mid-six­teenth cen­tu­ry. Need­less to say, he nev­er actu­al­ly man­aged to launch any­thing into the upper atmos­phere. But you have to give him cred­it for get­ting as far as he did with the idea, a con­sid­er­able progress doc­u­ment­ed in his trea­tise “How You Must Make Quite a Nice Rock­et That Can ...