Manned Spaceflight

Britannica Educational Publishing, Erik Gregersen

• Publisher: Britannica Educational Publishing
• Year: 2009
• eBook ISBN: 9781615300396
• Topic: Physical Sciences
• Subtopic: Astronomy & Astrophysics

Space travel is a familiar concept. Such was not the case in the early 20th century, when the United States and the former Soviet Union were locked in a race to send humans into orbit. This book details the history of manned spaceflight, from the development of rockets to the advent of space tourism. Readers also are introduced to the men and women who have been willing to soar into the great unknown.

CHAPTER 1
PRECURSORS IN FICTION AND FACT

Since ancient times, people around the world have studied the heavens and used their observations and explanations of astronomical phenomena for both religious and practical purposes. Some dreamed of leaving Earth to explore other worlds. For example, the French satirist Cyrano de Bergerac in the 17th century wrote Histoire comique des états et empires de la lune (1656) and Histoire comique des états et empires du soleil (1662; together in English as A Voyage to the Moon: With Some Account of the Solar World, 1754), describing fictional journeys to the Moon and the Sun. Two centuries later, the French author Jules Verne and the English novelist and historian H.G. Wells infused their stories with descriptions of outer space and of spaceflight that were consistent with the best understanding of the time. Verne’s De la Terre à la Lune (1865; From the Earth to the Moon) and Wells’s The War of the Worlds (1898) and The First Men in the Moon (1901) used sound scientific principles to describe space travel and encounters with alien beings.

In order to translate these fictional images of space travel into reality, it was necessary to devise some practical means of countering the influence of Earth’s gravity. By the beginning of the 20th century, the centuries-old technology of rockets had advanced to the point at which it was reasonable to consider their use to accelerate objects to a velocity sufficient to enter orbit around Earth or even to escape Earth’s gravity and travel away from the planet.

PIONEERS

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The first person to study in detail the use of rockets for spaceflight was the Russian schoolteacher and mathematician Konstantin Tsiolkovsky. In 1903 his article “Exploration of Cosmic Space by Means of Reaction Devices” laid out many of the principles of spaceflight. Up to his death in 1935, Tsiolkovsky continued to publish sophisticated studies on the theoretical aspects of spaceflight. He never complemented his writings with practical experiments in rocketry, but his work greatly influenced later space and rocket research in the Soviet Union and Europe.

Rocketry pioneer Hermann Oberth was by birth a Romanian but by nationality a German. Reading Verne’s From the Earth to the Moon as a youth inspired him to study the requirements for interplanetary travel. Oberth’s 1922 doctoral dissertation on rocket-powered flight was rejected by the University of Heidelberg for being too speculative, but it became the basis for his classic 1923 book Die Rakete zu den Planetenräumen (“The Rocket into Interplanetary Space”). The work explained the mathematical theory of rocketry, applied the theory to rocket design, and discussed the possibility of constructing space stations and of traveling to other planets.

In 1929 Oberth published a second influential book, Wege Zur Raumschiffahrt (Ways to Spaceflight). His works led to the creation of a number of rocket clubs in Germany as enthusiasts tried to turn Oberth’s ideas into practical devices. The most important of these groups historically was the Verein für Raumschiffahrt (VfR; “Society for Spaceship Travel”), which had as a member the young Wernher von Braun, who played a prominent role in all aspects of rocketry and space exploration, first in Germany and, after World War II, in the United States.

Although his work was crucial in stimulating the development of rocketry in Germany, Oberth himself had only a limited role in that development. Alone among the rocket pioneers, Oberth lived to see his ideas become reality. He was a guest of honour at the July 16, 1969, launch of Apollo 11.

Although Tsiolkovsky, Oberth, and American professor and inventor Robert Goddard are recognized as the most influential of the first-generation space pioneers, others made contributions in the early decades of the 20th century. For example, the Frenchman Robert Esnault-Pelterie began work on the theoretical aspects of spaceflight as early as 1907 and subsequently published several major books on the topic. He, like Tsiolkovsky in the Soviet Union and Oberth in Germany, was an effective publicist regarding the potential of space exploration.

In Austria, Eugen Sänger worked on rocket engines. In the late 1920s, he proposed developing a “rocket plane” that could reach a speed exceeding 10,000 km (more than 6,000 miles) per hour and an altitude of more than 65 km (40 miles). Interested in Sänger’s work, Nazi Germany in 1936 invited him to continue his investigations in that country.

ROBERT HUTCHINGS GODDARD

In the United States, pioneering work in rocket science was performed by Robert Hutchings Goddard, an American professor and inventor who is generally acknowledged to be the father of modern rocketry.

Born in Worcester, Mass., on Oct. 5, 1882, Goddard was the only child of a family of modest means. From childhood on he displayed great curiosity about physical phenomena and a bent toward inventiveness. In 1898 young Goddard’s imagination was fired by H.G. Wells’ novel War of the Worlds. Shortly thereafter, as he recounted, he actually dreamed of constructing a workable spaceflight machine. On Oct. 19, 1899, a day that became his “Anniversary Day,” he climbed a cherry tree in his backyard and “… imagined how wonderful it would be to make some device which had even the possibility of ascending to Mars … when I descended the tree … existence at last seemed very purposive.”

Goddard’s fascination with spaceflight continued into his college years at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute. Later, in 1908, he began a long association with Clark University, Worcester, where he earned his doctorate, taught physics, and carried out rocket experiments. He was the first to prove that thrust and consequent propulsion can take place in a vacuum, needing no air to push against. He was the first to explore mathematically the ratios of energy and thrust per weight of various fuels, including liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen. He was also the first to develop a rocket motor using liquid fuels (liquid oxygen and gasoline). In a small structure adjoining his laboratory, a liquid-propelled rocket in a static test in 1925 “operated satisfactorily and lifted its own weight,” he wrote.

On March 16, 1926, the world’s first flight of a liquid-propelled rocket engine took place on his Aunt Effie’s farm in Auburn, Mass., achieving a brief liftoff. In achieving liftoff of his small but sophisticated rocket engine, Goddard carried his experiments further than Tsiolkovsky and Oberth.

Goddard died of throat cancer in 1945, at the threshold of the age of jet and rocket. Years later, his work was acknowledged by the United States government when a $1 million settlement was made for the use of his patents.

EARLY ROCKET DEVELOPMENT

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Rocketry went from a largely theoretical discipline to practical applications with the advent of large-scale experimentation that occurred in the 1930s and 40s. Germany, Russia, and the United States were at the forefront of rocket development at this time. The quest to conquer space was not the only motivating factor for these countries, however. As tensions that would inexorably lead the world into war increased, nations looked to burgeoning rocket technology as a delivery method for advanced weaponry.

GERMANY

It was space exploration that motivated the members of the German VfR to build their rockets, but in the early 1930s their work came to the attention of the German military. At that time Capt. Walter R. Dornberger (later major general) was in charge of solid-fuel rocket research and development in the Ordnance Department of Germany’s 100,000-man armed forces, the Reichswehr. He recognized the military potential of liquid-fueled rockets and the ability of Braun. Dornberger arranged a research grant from the Ordnance Department for Braun, who then did research at a small development station that was set up adjacent to Dornberger’s existing solid-fuel rocket test facility at the Kummersdorf Army Proving Grounds near Berlin. Two years later Braun received a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Berlin. His thesis, which, for reasons of military security, bore the nondescript title “About Combustion Tests,” contained the theoretical investigation and developmental experiments on 300- and 660-pound-thrust (1,335 to 2,937 newtons) rocket engines.

By December 1934 Braun’s group, which then included one additional engineer and three mechanics, had successfully launched two rockets that rose vertically to more than 1.5 miles (2.4 km). But by this time there was no longer a German rocket society; rocket tests had been forbidden by decree, and the only way open to such research was through the military forces.

Test launch of a V-2 rocket. Camera Press

To give Braun’s engineers the needed space and secrecy for their work, the German government erected a development and test centre at Peenemünde on the coast of the Baltic Sea. Dornberger was the military commander and Braun was the technical director.

There they developed, among other devices, the V-2 (meaning Vengeance Weapon 2 but originally designated the A-4) ballistic missile. The V-2 was 14 metres (47 feet) long, weighed 12,700–13,200 kg (28,000–29,000 pounds) at launching, and developed about 60,000 pounds of thrust (267,000 newtons), burning alcohol and liquid oxygen. The payload was about 725 kg (1,600 pounds) of high explosive, horizontal range was about 320 km (200 miles), and the peak altitude usually reached was roughly 80 km (50 miles). It was first launched successfully on Oct. 3, 1942, and was fired against Paris on Sept. 6, 1944. Two days later the first of more than 1,100 V-2s was fired against Great Britain (the last on March 27, 1945). Belgium was also heavily bombarded.

Although built as a weapon of war, the V-2 later served as the predecessor of many of the rockets used in the early space programs of the United States and the Soviet Union. As World War II neared its end in early 1945, Braun, his younger brother Magnus, Dornberger, and the entire German rocket development team chose to surrender to the United States, where they believed they would likely receive support for their rocket research and space exploration plans. Later in the year, they were taken to the United States, as were their engineering plans and the parts needed to construct a number of V-2s. The German rocket team played a central role in the early development of space launchers for the United States.

In later years, Braun attempted to justify his involvement in the development of the German V-2 rocket and stated that patriotic motives outweighed whatever qualms he had about the moral implications of his nation’s policies under Hitler. He also emphasized the innate impartiality of scientific research, which in itself has no moral dimensions until its products are put to use by the larger society.

UNITED STATES

In 1936, as Braun was developing rockets for the German military, several young American engineers led by graduate student Frank Malina began working on rocketry at the Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory of the California Institute of Technology (GALCIT). Malina’s group was supported by the eminent aerodynamicist Theodore von Kármán, GALCIT’s director, and it included Chinese engineer Qian Xuesen (Ch’ien Hsüeh-sen), who in the 1950s returned home to become one of the pioneers of rocketry in China.

In 1943 Malina and his associates began calling their group the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), a name that was formally adopted the following year. JPL soon became a centre for missile research and development for the U.S. Army. Following World War II, those weapons were adapted for use in early U.S. space experiments. After 1958, when it became part of the newly established National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), JPL adapted itself to being the leading U.S. centre for solar system exploration.

Goddard’s early tests were modestly financed over a period of several years by the Smithsonian Institution. In 1929, following an aborted and noisy flight test that brought unwanted press notice to the publicity-shy inventor, Charles A. Lindbergh was instrumental in procuring funding for Goddard’s experiments. From 1930 to the mid-1940s, the Guggenheim Fund for the Promotion of Aeronautics financed the work on a scale that made possible a small shop and crew and experimental flights at Roswell, N.M.

At Roswell, Goddard became the first to shoot a liquid-fuel rocket faster than the speed of sound (1935). He obtained the first patents of a steering apparatus for the rocket machine and of the use of “step rockets” to gain great altitudes. He also developed the first pumps suitable for rocket fuels and self-cooling rocket motors. However, news of his work drew from the press and the public high amusement that “Moony” Goddard could take seriously the possibility of travel beyond Earth. His small rockets, early prototypes of modern thrusters, achieved altitudes of up to 1.6 km (1 mile) above the prairie.

During World War II, Goddard offered his work to the military, but lack of interest led to his closing down the Roswell establishment. However, Lindbergh and the Guggenheim Fund remained staunch advocates of Goddard and the feasibility of space exploration.

SOVIET UNION

In the U.S.S.R., the government took an interest in rockets as early as 1921 with the founding of a military facility devoted to rocket research. Over the next decade, that centre was expanded and renamed the Gas Dynamics Laboratory. There in the early 1930s, Valentin Glushko carried out pioneering work on rocket engines.

Meanwhile, other rocket enthusiasts in the Soviet Union organized into societies that by 1931 had consolidated into an organization known as GIRD (the abbreviation in Russian for “Group for the Study of Reactive Motion”), with branches in Moscow and Leningrad. Emerging as leaders of the Moscow branch were the aeronautical engineer Sergey Korolyov, who had become interested in spaceflight at a young age, and the early space visionary Fridrikh Tsander. Korolyov and a colleague, Mikhail Tikhonravov, on Aug. 17, 1933, launched the first Soviet liquid-fueled rocket. Later that year, the Moscow and Leningrad branches of GIRD were combined with the Gas Dynamics Laboratory to form the military-controlled Rocket Propulsion Research Institute (RNII), which five years later became Scientific-Research Institute 3 (NII-3). In its early years, the organization did not work directly on space technology, but ultimately it played a central role in Soviet rocket development.

Korolyov was arrested in 1937 as part of the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin’s great purges of intellectuals and was sent to a Siberian prison. After Stalin recognized the imprudence of removing the best technical people from the Soviet war effort, Korolyov was transferred to a prison-based design bureau, where he spent most of World War II working on weapons, although not on large rockets. By the end of the war, Stalin had become interested in ballistic missiles, and he sent a team, which included Korolyov, on visits to Germany to investigate the V-2 program. A number of German engineers were relocated to the Soviet Union in the aftermath of the war, but they did not play a central role in postwar Soviet rocket development; most returned to Germany in the early 1950s.

PREPARING FOR SPACEFLIGHT

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Between 1946 and 1951 Braun and about 100 members of his group conducted test firings of captured German V-2 rockets at the U.S. Army Ordnance Corps test site at White Sands, N.M. These sounding-rocket flights reached high altitudes (120–200 km [75–125 miles]) before falling back to Earth. Although the primary purpose of the tests was to advance rocket technology, the army invited American scientists interested in high-altitude research to put experiments aboard the V-2s. An Upper Atmosphere Research Panel, chaired by the physicist James Van Allen, was formed to coordinate the scientific use of these rocket launchings.

The panel had a central role in the early years of American space science, which focused on experiments on solar and stellar ultraviolet radiation, the aurora, and the nature o...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Precursors in Fiction and Fact
• Chapter 2: Spaceflight Begins
• Chapter 3: The Race to the Moon
• Chapter 4: The Space Shuttle Program
• Chapter 5: Space Stations
• Chapter 6: Future Directions
• Chapter 7: Humans in Space
• Chapter 8: American Astronauts
• Chapter 9: Soviet and Russian Cosmonauts
• Chapter 10: International Astronauts and Spaceflight Participants
• Appendix: Achievements in Space
• Glossary
• For Further Reading
• Index