We are fire-wielding creatures who live on our solar system's only fire planet. Fire needs a good supply of free oxygen, which is hard to maintain, meaning that fire planets may be rare in the cosmos. Because of the effort needed to escape gravitational fields, it is difficult to imagine leaving a planet without energy from combustion or materials forged by fire – which brings us back to the human history of constructing the fiery projectiles that eventually developed into rockets capable of leaving Earth. The probable rareness of fire in the cosmos should help us to appreciate the pyrodiversity that has evolved on Earth and the astounding range of ways that humans have elaborated upon the capabilities of their fire planet.