High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! An underground rocket or rocket drill is a device for rapidly drilling holes through soil and rock of varying composition at rates up to 1 metre per second by utilising supersonic jets of hot gases. It was developed by Russian engineer Mikhail Tsiferov in 1948. According to Soviet geologist, academician Vladimir Smirnov, the device "may well bring about a revolution in the facilities for penetrating the interior of the earth".