Spaceflight Before 1951
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Spaceflight Before 1951
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Re: Spaceflight Before 1951
#2In 1957, two months before the Sputnik 1 launch, a steel cap covering an underground nuclear explosion test, although unlikely, may have been the first object reaching greater then orbital, in fact escape velocity from earth:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Plumbbob#Missing_ste...
Re: Spaceflight Before 1951
#3In 1957, two months before the Sputnik 1 launch, a steel cap covering an underground nuclear explosion test, although unlikely, may have been the first object reaching greater then orbital, in fact escape velocity from earth: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Plumbbob#Missing_ste...
Does it really count if it is vaporized before leaving the atmosphere?
Re: Spaceflight Before 1951
#4In 1957, two months before the Sputnik 1 launch, a steel cap covering an underground nuclear explosion test, although unlikely, may have been the first object reaching greater then orbital, in fact escape velocity from earth: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Plumbbob#Missing_ste...
Does it really count if it is vaporized before leaving the atmosphere?
These calculations suggest that it indeed probably vaporized within a few meters due to the insane amount of heat: https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/488151/could-the...
Re: Spaceflight Before 1951
#5I realise this is a trite observation, but it never ceases to amaze me that it took just 22 years from the beginning of space exploration to walking on the moon.
Re: Spaceflight Before 1951
#6A few weeks ago a Russian-speaking friend in the aerospace industry (hey Dennis!) surprised me with photos of Yuri Gagarin (and other cosmonauts from Air Force Group 1) engaging with a re-usable lifting body aircraft, https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/836685279875956746/87...
The vehicle was the subject of his thesis with the following diagrams apparently being sourced from it, https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/836685279875956746/87... The design is a fairly striking, lifting body design being pursued in the early 60s! (Russian source, http://www.buran.ru/other/Buran_Gagarin.pdf )
This meant that the first human in orbit and on another heavenly body both worked on reusable space vehicles (Gagarin's vehicle and the Dyna-Soar by Neil Armstrong). That's a fairly incredible coincidence that begs the question; why? Why did two different agencies - walled off from each other at opposite ends of the world - converge on the same design?
Apparently, as with many things from that era, the answer is the Nazis. More specifically, the Silbervogel, a lifting-body, sub-orbital, liquid-fuel-rocket-powered vehicle designed in the 1930s by Irene Bredt and Eugene Sanger. This is the very first known design of its kind, and it seems to have shaped much of aerospace history. For e.g. regeneratively cooled nozzles trace their history back to this design, as the Silbervogel was designed to operate with one due to their early experiments/tests. They also did substantial work in the physical and physio-chemical properties of liquid-fueled rockets that stands as some of the earliest work on the subject.
Eugene Sanger has become well known in rocketry circles and has been credited for some of the analytical techniques used to estimate the performance of liquid-fueled rockets due to his book, Raketenjlugtechnik (Rocket Flight Technology) that he published in 1933 (along with additional literature later on). Because of this public material, the field remembers him as one of the origin points for these analytical techniques. But it turns out that might be wrong.
Thanks to the records about the silbervogel and subsequent reports - http://www.astronautix.com/data/saenger.pdf , I've found that Sanger was the engineer who designed the lifting body, but Irene was the mathematician and physicist who modeled their experiments and derived the calculations we use today. This fact is fairly exciting to a nerd like me. It's my first contribution to academia/the official record! :)
However, it's not that far off to say that Bredt & Sanger are both the progenitors of multiple sub-fields of modern aerospace research, especially re-usable spaceplanes.
Re: Spaceflight Before 1951
#7I realise this is a trite observation, but it never ceases to amaze me that it took just 22 years from the beginning of space exploration to walking on the moon.
The delta-v from Earth Surface to Low Earth Orbit (beginning of space exploration) is 9km/s.
The delta-v from Earth Surface to Moon is 15km/s.
So basically once you learned to go to space, going to the Moon is "only" 60% harder, even thought the moon is 1000x further away.
Re: Spaceflight Before 1951
#8I realise this is a trite observation, but it never ceases to amaze me that it took just 22 years from the beginning of space exploration to walking on the moon.
The delta-v from Earth Surface to Low Earth Orbit (beginning of space exploration) is 9km/s. The delta-v from Earth Surface to Moon is 15km/s. So basically once you learned to go to space, going to the Moon is "only" 60% harder, even thought the moon is 1000x further away.
A full up Saturn V with LEM and the works looks a lot more complex and capable than a 60% improvement on a V2.
Re: Spaceflight Before 1951
#9I realise this is a trite observation, but it never ceases to amaze me that it took just 22 years from the beginning of space exploration to walking on the moon.
There's a filk song about Sputnik that makes this point as its punchline.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-mZ9pKvCmk - "Surprise!"
Sputnik wore out and spiraled back to Earth
On re-entry it burned up very soon
Hail and good-bye to that goose in the sky...
And in 12 more years a man walked on the Moon!
Re: Spaceflight Before 1951
#10I realise this is a trite observation, but it never ceases to amaze me that it took just 22 years from the beginning of space exploration to walking on the moon.
The delta-v from Earth Surface to Low Earth Orbit (beginning of space exploration) is 9km/s. The delta-v from Earth Surface to Moon is 15km/s. So basically once you learned to go to space, going to the Moon is "only" 60% harder, even thought the moon is 1000x further away.
The delta-v from Earth Surface to the bottom of the ocean is 0, so by your logic, going there is trivial.