Lagâri Hasan Çelebi

Lagari Hasan Çelebi (* in the 16th or 17th century; † in the 17th century ) was an Ottoman- Turkish aviation pioneer, said to have been the first person who has completed a successful manned flight with a rocket.

The history

According to a report by Evliya Çelebi in the 17th century Lagari Hasan Çelebi launched in a rocket from sarayburnu, a point below the Topkapı Palace. The flight should have taken place at the time of the birth of the daughter of Sultan Murad IV in 1633. Lagari announced before the start that he would " talk to Jesus in heaven." He lifted with a conical rocket from slipped with wings across the Bosphorus and made a successful landing, which earned him a position in the Ottoman army. He was rewarded by the Sultan with gold and the rank of Sipahi.

Evliya Çelebi describes the vehicle as a 7 cubits (1 cubit = 64 cm ) cone-shaped structure with a siebenstrahligen emissions, which was filled with 50 Okka black powder (1 Okka = 1.282 kg ). It is believed that the launch weight of the missile was about 165 kg, about 450 to 600 grams of gunpowder burned in the second, which would have been enough for a burn time of 15 to 20 seconds to ensure a takeoff thrust of 175 kg, and the for a successful start is necessary. The vertical flight lasted 20 seconds and therefore should Evliya Çelebi According during the night of the birth of her daughter, Kaya Sultan of Sultan Murad IV took place. Then he should have braked with artificial wings his case in the Bosphorus.

Evliya Çelebi wrote about Lagaris brother Hezarfen Ahmed Çelebi, who is said to have previously made ​​a gliding one year also on the Bosphorus.

Reports of their successful flights in 1638 reached England, where the flight tests of the two Turks by John Wilkins in A Discovery of a New World are mentioned. Five years later, Çelebi was exiled to the Crimea, where he died, probably around 1640th

Reverberation

Istanbul Kanatlarimin altinda ( "Istanbul Beneath My Wings " ) is a 1996 film about the life of Hezarfen Ahmed Çelebi, his brother Hasan Çelebi Lagari, and the Ottoman society in the early 17th century during the reign of Murad IV, as of Evliya Çelebi witnessed and been told.

In the episode " Crash and Burn" the television show MythBusters, which aired on 11 November 2009, an attempt was made to reconstruct the rocket launch Lagari Hasan Çelebi. The attempt failed, and the legend was as busted ( " refuted " ) classified.