6 ms·

Spaceflight Before 1951

63 points by ruaraidh 5y ago

7373737373 5y ago
In 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_steel_bore_cap https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Plumbbob#Missing_ste...
- david_draco 5y ago
  Does it really count if it is vaporized before leaving the atmosphere?
  - 7373737373 5y ago
    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-end-cap-of-the-pascal-b-1-survive-its-trip-through-the-atmosphere https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/488151/could-the...
    - beerandt 5y ago
      That meteor equation isn't the right one to use. It's based on assumptions that don't apply here. It has to be re-derived, at a minimum, if it can even be repurposed. Any dt equation like that should have some value of X_final-X_initial for any constants that change. For rho, he plugs in rho_initial for rho_final. And rho_initial in space is zero, so it likely got dropped from the equation when it was derived. That said, if it even survived the initial xray ablation, yeah, it probably burnt up before reaching space, or at least slowed down enough that it came back down.
Xophmeister 5y ago
I 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.
- crubier 5y ago
  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.
  - simonh 5y ago
    A full up Saturn V with LEM and the works looks a lot more complex and capable than a 60% improvement on a V2.
    - HelloNurse 5y ago
      But the additional complexity is mostly designing a suite of vehicles, not general rocketry advances.
      - geocrasher 5y ago
        Incorrect. Orbital mechanics were not a part of the V2 era programs because they were sub-orbital with relatively simple parabolic trajectories. Getting a capsule back from LEO was not something that had been worked out mathematically until later.
    - hoseja 5y ago
      V2 does NOT go into orbit.
      - simonh 5y ago
        Yet another reason why the comment I'm replying to was incorrect, thanks.
areoform 5y ago
A 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/836685279875956746/876626462332026910/IMG_6810.JPG 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/836685279875956746/876623575732338750/IMG_6806.JPG 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 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 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.
davidw 5y ago
See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wan_Hu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wan_Hu
- nsf39k 5y ago
  There’s this guy too (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagâri_Hasan_Çelebi https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagâri_Hasan_Çelebi) who allegedly made a manned rocket flight in 1633 in front of the Ottoman sultan.
nsf39k 5y ago
The British Interplanetary Society proposed using a modified V-2 called ‘Megaroc’ to perform a manned suborbital spaceflight before 1950. (https://www.bis-space.com/megaroc/ https://www.bis-space.com/megaroc/) They were pretty visionary when it came to space exploration and even made the first serious study into potential manned lunar mission in 1938 using a ‘step rocket’. (https://www.bis-space.com/the-bis-lunar-spaceship/ https://www.bis-space.com/the-bis-lunar-spaceship/)
- the_third_wave 5y ago
  There is a link to some generic viagra salespitch [1] in that first article, I wonder how it got there - a subtle hack or a strange form of advertising? The control connections between cabin and hull would uncouple automatically on separation and the communication system would be switched from the four-dipole arrays arranged in blisters near the stem of the hull to arrays situated under the floor of the cabin. --->>>This moment can be described as the action of sildenafil.<<<--- Cabin attitude and rate of spin would be controlled by hydrogen peroxide jets. [1] I assume it to be a salespitch by the URL, not having followed the link I can not be sure
jgilias 5y ago
Reminds me of this stingy classic by Tom Lehrer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjDEsGZLbio https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjDEsGZLbio
gumby 5y ago
> Beginning life as a weapon, the V-2 was pressed into peaceful service after the war at the United States' White Sands Missile Range as well as the Soviet Union's Kapustin Yar. This is a rather generous explanation. They began as weapons and their use was explored by the militaries of the victorious powers. Those research efforts were primarily to gain the knowledge of how to continue development of rocket weapons. In the case of the US: NACA worked on air flight only; civilian space research only began with the formation of NASA in 1958.

63 points by ruaraidh 5y ago

In 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_steel_bore_cap https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Plumbbob#Missing_ste...

david_draco 5y ago
Does it really count if it is vaporized before leaving the atmosphere?
- 7373737373 5y ago
  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-end-cap-of-the-pascal-b-1-survive-its-trip-through-the-atmosphere https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/488151/could-the...
  - beerandt 5y ago
    That meteor equation isn't the right one to use. It's based on assumptions that don't apply here. It has to be re-derived, at a minimum, if it can even be repurposed. Any dt equation like that should have some value of X_final-X_initial for any constants that change. For rho, he plugs in rho_initial for rho_final. And rho_initial in space is zero, so it likely got dropped from the equation when it was derived. That said, if it even survived the initial xray ablation, yeah, it probably burnt up before reaching space, or at least slowed down enough that it came back down.

Xophmeister 5y ago

I 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.

crubier 5y ago
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.
- simonh 5y ago
  A full up Saturn V with LEM and the works looks a lot more complex and capable than a 60% improvement on a V2.
  - HelloNurse 5y ago
    But the additional complexity is mostly designing a suite of vehicles, not general rocketry advances.
    - geocrasher 5y ago
      Incorrect. Orbital mechanics were not a part of the V2 era programs because they were sub-orbital with relatively simple parabolic trajectories. Getting a capsule back from LEO was not something that had been worked out mathematically until later.
  - hoseja 5y ago
    V2 does NOT go into orbit.
    - simonh 5y ago
      Yet another reason why the comment I'm replying to was incorrect, thanks.

areoform 5y ago

A 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/836685279875956746/876626462332026910/IMG_6810.JPG 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/836685279875956746/876623575732338750/IMG_6806.JPG 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 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 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.

davidw 5y ago

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wan_Hu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wan_Hu

nsf39k 5y ago
There’s this guy too (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagâri_Hasan_Çelebi https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagâri_Hasan_Çelebi) who allegedly made a manned rocket flight in 1633 in front of the Ottoman sultan.

nsf39k 5y ago

The British Interplanetary Society proposed using a modified V-2 called ‘Megaroc’ to perform a manned suborbital spaceflight before 1950. (https://www.bis-space.com/megaroc/ https://www.bis-space.com/megaroc/) They were pretty visionary when it came to space exploration and even made the first serious study into potential manned lunar mission in 1938 using a ‘step rocket’. (https://www.bis-space.com/the-bis-lunar-spaceship/ https://www.bis-space.com/the-bis-lunar-spaceship/)

the_third_wave 5y ago
There is a link to some generic viagra salespitch [1] in that first article, I wonder how it got there - a subtle hack or a strange form of advertising? The control connections between cabin and hull would uncouple automatically on separation and the communication system would be switched from the four-dipole arrays arranged in blisters near the stem of the hull to arrays situated under the floor of the cabin. --->>>This moment can be described as the action of sildenafil.<<<--- Cabin attitude and rate of spin would be controlled by hydrogen peroxide jets. [1] I assume it to be a salespitch by the URL, not having followed the link I can not be sure

jgilias 5y ago

Reminds me of this stingy classic by Tom Lehrer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjDEsGZLbio https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjDEsGZLbio

gumby 5y ago

> Beginning life as a weapon, the V-2 was pressed into peaceful service after the war at the United States' White Sands Missile Range as well as the Soviet Union's Kapustin Yar. This is a rather generous explanation. They began as weapons and their use was explored by the militaries of the victorious powers. Those research efforts were primarily to gain the knowledge of how to continue development of rocket weapons. In the case of the US: NACA worked on air flight only; civilian space research only began with the formation of NASA in 1958.