140
3 A Brief History of Space Flight
that could fly over the English Channel. As he and his two assistants was compressing
the gunpowder charges for the rocket motor, unfortunately, an explosion occurred at
the workshop, and the trio was killed.
An Austrian rocket pioneer, Friedrich Schmiedl (1902−1994), had also attempted
to use solid-fueled rockets to deliver mails between two villages separated by mountains or between two cities. He had developed and tested a series of recoverable solid
rockets, V1-V6, from 1928 to1930, and refused to participate in the development
of any military rockets. In 1931, he successfully conducted an official rocket-mail
service between Austrian towns and then began with what he called regular mail
service using his new type rocket G1. Schmiedl had ever dreamed of using enormous
rockets to transport long-range mails between two cities or even two continents.
However, the Austrian Post Office obtained a law prohibiting further rocket-mail
activities in 1934, and a year later, a general government ban on private rocket development was promulgated. With the breakout of the Second World War, he destroyed
his rocket work, not wanting it to be used for military purposes. Similarly, he refused
an offer of the postwar to go to the United States and conduct further rocket research.
Another Austrian-German aerospace engineer, Eugen Albert Sänger
(1905−1964), was born in Pressnitz, Austria-Hungary, on September 22, 1905, and
was best known for his contribution to lifting body and ramjet technologies. In 1933,
he began pioneering tests of rocket engines at Vienna and published his original
thesis “Rocket Flight Engineering”, which covered in great mathematical detail
the design of rocket planes, space stations, and even interplanetary travel using ion
engines that could attain relativistic velocities. It is a book far leaping ahead of
other works on astronautics at that time. For example, the rocket-plane design was a
horizontal takeoff-and-landing and hypersonic glider in this book; assuming a liquid
propellant rocket engine with an exhaust velocity of 3700 m/s and a mass ratio
of 7:1, he calculated that the rocket-plane would have a range of 4000−6000 km
while gliding at Mach 13 in 40−60 km altitude. In 1934, Sänger developed a
liquid-propellant rocket engine with regenerative cooling, which researched a thrust
of 30 kgf and demonstrated exhaust velocities of 3000 m/s at 50-atm chamber
pressure. In 1936, Sänger was invited to work for the Herman Göring Aviation
Research Institute, Germany, and studied a manned intercontinental hypersonic
bomber with its own rocket engines that would climb to the fringe of space and then
skip along the upper atmosphere, not actually entering orbit. This remarkable design
was called “Silver-Bird”, which would rely on its fuselage creating lift as a lifting
body to fly along a sub-orbital path. He also designed the rocket engines applied to
this space-plane, which would be required to generate a thrust of 10,200 kgf. By
1942, Sänger had tested the rocket engine at a chamber pressure of 100 atmospheres,
powered by high-energy propellants with exotic additives, and components of the
engine with 10
5 kgf thrust. Since Sänger estimated that it would take twenty years
of development to produce an operational system of the Silver-Bird, the Hitler
government suspended the program until 1944, but too late to be of any interest as the
Nazi Germany entered its death throes. Meanwhile, Sänger also did important work
on ramjet engine technology during the War, studying the projects like interceptor
SK P14. It was shown from the results of ground and flight tests that the ramjet
3 A Brief History of Space Flight
that could fly over the English Channel. As he and his two assistants was compressing
the gunpowder charges for the rocket motor, unfortunately, an explosion occurred at
the workshop, and the trio was killed.
An Austrian rocket pioneer, Friedrich Schmiedl (1902−1994), had also attempted
to use solid-fueled rockets to deliver mails between two villages separated by mountains or between two cities. He had developed and tested a series of recoverable solid
rockets, V1-V6, from 1928 to1930, and refused to participate in the development
of any military rockets. In 1931, he successfully conducted an official rocket-mail
service between Austrian towns and then began with what he called regular mail
service using his new type rocket G1. Schmiedl had ever dreamed of using enormous
rockets to transport long-range mails between two cities or even two continents.
However, the Austrian Post Office obtained a law prohibiting further rocket-mail
activities in 1934, and a year later, a general government ban on private rocket development was promulgated. With the breakout of the Second World War, he destroyed
his rocket work, not wanting it to be used for military purposes. Similarly, he refused
an offer of the postwar to go to the United States and conduct further rocket research.
Another Austrian-German aerospace engineer, Eugen Albert Sänger
(1905−1964), was born in Pressnitz, Austria-Hungary, on September 22, 1905, and
was best known for his contribution to lifting body and ramjet technologies. In 1933,
he began pioneering tests of rocket engines at Vienna and published his original
thesis “Rocket Flight Engineering”, which covered in great mathematical detail
the design of rocket planes, space stations, and even interplanetary travel using ion
engines that could attain relativistic velocities. It is a book far leaping ahead of
other works on astronautics at that time. For example, the rocket-plane design was a
horizontal takeoff-and-landing and hypersonic glider in this book; assuming a liquid
propellant rocket engine with an exhaust velocity of 3700 m/s and a mass ratio
of 7:1, he calculated that the rocket-plane would have a range of 4000−6000 km
while gliding at Mach 13 in 40−60 km altitude. In 1934, Sänger developed a
liquid-propellant rocket engine with regenerative cooling, which researched a thrust
of 30 kgf and demonstrated exhaust velocities of 3000 m/s at 50-atm chamber
pressure. In 1936, Sänger was invited to work for the Herman Göring Aviation
Research Institute, Germany, and studied a manned intercontinental hypersonic
bomber with its own rocket engines that would climb to the fringe of space and then
skip along the upper atmosphere, not actually entering orbit. This remarkable design
was called “Silver-Bird”, which would rely on its fuselage creating lift as a lifting
body to fly along a sub-orbital path. He also designed the rocket engines applied to
this space-plane, which would be required to generate a thrust of 10,200 kgf. By
1942, Sänger had tested the rocket engine at a chamber pressure of 100 atmospheres,
powered by high-energy propellants with exotic additives, and components of the
engine with 10
5 kgf thrust. Since Sänger estimated that it would take twenty years
of development to produce an operational system of the Silver-Bird, the Hitler
government suspended the program until 1944, but too late to be of any interest as the
Nazi Germany entered its death throes. Meanwhile, Sänger also did important work
on ramjet engine technology during the War, studying the projects like interceptor
SK P14. It was shown from the results of ground and flight tests that the ramjet