The History Book Club discussion

This is a thread to discuss the "history of rockets".

The V-2 Rocket of Germany

The A-4, later called the V-2, was a single-stage rocket fueled by alcohol and liquid oxygen. It stood 46.1 feet high and had a thrust of 56,000 pounds. The A-4 had a payload capacity of 2,200 pounds and could reach a velocity of 3,500 miles per hour. On October 3, 1942 the A-4 was first launched from Peenemunde. Breaking the sound barrier, it reached an altitude of sixty miles. It was the world's first launch of a ballistic missile and the first rocket ever to go into the fringes of space.

In the early 1930's, rocket clubs sprang up all over Germany. One of these clubs, the Verein fur Raumschiffarht (Rocket Society), had the young engineer Wernher von Braun as a member.

During this same period of time the German military was searching for a weapon which would not violate the Versailles Treaty of World War I, and at the same time defend Germany. Artillery captain Walter Dornberger was assigned to investigate the feasibility of using rockets. Dornberger went to see the VfR and, being impressed with their enthusiasm, gave them $400 to build a rocket. Wernher von Braun worked through the spring and summer of 1932, only to have the rocket fail when tested in front of the military. However, Dornberger was impressed with von Braun and hired him to lead the military's rocket artillery unit.

By 1934 von Braun and Dornberger had a team of 80 engineers building rockets in Kummersdorf, about 60 miles south of Berlin. Von Braun's natural talents as a leader shone, as well as his ability to assimilate great quantities of data while keeping in mind the big picture. With the successful launch of two rockets, Max and Moritz, in 1934, von Braun's proposal to work on a jet-assisted take-off device for heavy bombers and all-rocket fighters was granted. However, Kummersdorf was too small for the task, so a new facility had to be built.

Peenemunde, located on the Baltic coast, was chosen as the new site. Peenemunde was large enough to launch and monitor rockets over ranges up to about 200 miles, with optical and electric observing instruments along the trajectory, with no risk of harming people and property.

By now Hitler had taken over Germany and Herman Goering ruled the Luftwaffe. Dornberger held a public test of the A-2 which was greatly successful. Funding continued to flow to von Braun's team, developing the A-3 and finally the A-4.

In 1943 Hitler decided to use the A-4 as a "vengeance weapon," and the group found themselves developing the A-4 to rain explosives on London. Fourteen months after Hitler ordered it into production, the first combat A-4, now called the V-2, was launched toward western Europe on September 7, 1944. When the first V-2 hit London von Braun remarked to his colleagues, "The rocket worked perfectly except for landing on the wrong planet."

The SS and the Gestapo arrested von Braun for crimes against the state because he persisted in talking about building rockets which would go into orbit around the Earth and perhaps go to the Moon. His crime was indulging in frivolous dreams when he should have been concentrating on building bigger rocket bombs for the Nazi war machine. Dornberger convinced the SS and the Gestapo to release von Braun because without him there would be no V-2 and Hitler would have them all shot.

On arriving back at Peenemunde, von Braun immediately assembled his planning staff and asked them to decide how and to whom they should surrender. Most of the scientists were frightened of the Russians, they felt the French would treat them like slaves, and the British did not have enough money to afford a rocket program. That left the Americans. After stealing a train with forged papers, von Braun led 500 people through war-torn Germany to surrender to the Americans. The SS were issued orders to kill the German engineers, who hid their notes in a mine shaft and evaded their own army while searching for the Americans. Finally, the team found an American private and surrendered to him. Realizing the importance of these engineers, the Americans immediately went to Peenemunde and Nordhausen and captured all of the remaining V-2's and V-2 parts, then destroyed both places with explosives. The Americans brought over 300 train car loads of spare V-2 parts to the United States. Much of von Braun's production team was captured by the Russians. (Source: http://inventors.about.com/library/in...)

Thank you Jill.

Lucky the Allies got von Braun, huh?

Yes

Hitler's Rockets: The Story of the V-2s

by Norman Longmate (no photo)

Synopsis:

In Hitler’s Rockets Norman Longmate tells the story of the V-2, the technically brilliant but hated weapon, the ancestor and forerunner of all subsequent ballistic missiles. He reveals the devious power-play within the German armed forces and the Nazi establishment that so influenced the creation of the rockets. He shows through contemporary documents and protagonists’ accounts how the British intelligence skillfully pieced together often contradictory evidence as it sought to establish the true nature of the threat. Finally he recalls in detail the feel and fears of the time from the viewpoint of those who suffered, and those who were all too conscious tat they were the target.

Too little too late for the Nazis.......or the war might have had a different outcome or at least dragged on longer.

The Rocket and the Reich: Peenemunda and the Coming of the Ballistic Missile Era

by Michael J. Neufeld (no photo)

Synopsis:

The story behind one of the greatest engineering feats of World War II. The Rocket and the Reich is the paradoxical tale of the creation of a technology that would prove so valuable to Allied powers after the war but ultimately proved a failure to the Germans during it. Two 8-page photo inserts; 6 maps and diagrams.

Thanks Bryan and Jill for the adds.

Did you know about this early effort by the U.S.? Read all about it.

The X-15 Rocket Plan: Flying the First Wings into Space

by Michelle L. Evans (no photo)

Synopsis

With the Soviet Union’s launch of the first Sputnik satellite in 1957, the Cold War soared to new heights as Americans feared losing the race into space. The X-15 Rocket Plane tells the enthralling yet little-known story of the hypersonic X-15, the winged rocket ship that met this challenge and opened the way into human-controlled spaceflight.

Drawing on interviews with those who were there, Michelle Evans captures the drama and excitement of, yes, rocket science: how to handle the heat generated at speeds up to Mach 7, how to make a rocket propulsion system that could throttle, and how to safely reenter the atmosphere from space and make a precision landing.

This book puts a human face on the feats of science and engineering that went into the X-15 program, many of them critical to the development of the Space Shuttle. And, finally, it introduces us to the largely unsung pilots of the X-15. By the time of the Apollo 11 moon landing, thirty-one American astronauts had flown into space—eight of them astronaut-pilots of the X-15. The X-15 Rocket Plane restores these pioneers, and the others who made it happen, to their rightful place in the history of spaceflight.

Thank you Jill and no I did not.

Bentley wrote: "Thank you Jill and no I did not."

Neither did I.

Although they did not destroy the facility, the RAF slowed down the Nazi's jet program just enough to make a difference.

The Peenemunde Raid: The Night of 17-18 August, 1943

by Martin Middlebrook

Synopsis:

On August 17, 1943, RAF Bomber Command set out to destroy the secret research establishment where Nazi scientists were developing state-of-the-art rockets. Although the bombing "crept back" from its target, and the cloudless sky made the British aircraft perfect targets, they succeeded in disrupting Hitler's weapons program. Containing the remembrances of over 400 people from both sides--flight crews, researchers at the site, and foreign laborers forced to work there--this classic history is thoroughly irresistible.

The History of Rockets

by Ron Miller

Synopsis:

Surveys the invention, development, and different uses of rockets, from their beginnings in ancient Greece and China to modern efforts to explore outer space.

About the Author:

Ron Miller is an illustrator and author living in South Boston, Virginia.

Before becoming a freelance illustrator in 1977, Miller was art director for the National Air & Space Museum's Albert Einstein Planetarium.

Prior to this he was a commercial advertising illustrator. His primary work today entails the writing and illustration of books specializing in astronomical, astronautical and science fiction subjects. His special interest is in exciting young people about science, and in recent years has focused on writing books for young adults. To date he has more than 50 titles to his credit. His work has also appeared on scores of book jackets, book interiors and in magazines such as National Geographic, Reader's Digest, Scientific American, Smithsonian, Air & Space, Sky & Telescope, Newsweek, Natural History, Discover, Geo, etc.

Miller's books include the Hugo-nominated The Grand Tour, Cycles of Fire, In the Stream of Stars, and The History of Earth. All of have been Book-of-the-Month Club Feature Selections (as well as selections of the Science, Quality Paperback and Astronomy book clubs) and have seen numerous translations.

Considered an authority on Jules Verne, Miller translated and illustrated new, definitive editions of Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and Journey to the Center of the Earth as well as a major companion/atlas to Verne's works. He has worked as a consultant on Verne for Disney Imagineering and for A&E's Biography series.

Miller is also considered an authority on the early history of spaceflight. The Dream Machines, a comprehensive 744-page history of manned spacecraft, was nominated for the prestigious IAF Manuscript Award and won the Booklist Editor's Choice Award.

As an artist, Miller has designed a set of ten commemorative stamps for the U.S. Postal Service and has been a production illustrator for motion pictures, notably Dune and Total Recall. He has also done preproduction concepts, consultation and matte art for David Lynch, George Miller, John Ellis, UFO Films and James Cameron.

He designed and co-directed the computer-generated show ride film, Impact! and has taken part in numerous international space art workshops and exhibitions, including seminal sessions held in Iceland and the Soviet Union (where he was invited by the Soviet government to take part in the 30th anniversary celebration of the launch of Sputnik).

His original paintings are in numerous private and public collections, including the Smithsonian Institution and the Pushkin Museum (Moscow).

Apollo: The Race to the Moon

by Charles Murray

Synopsis:

Out of print for fifteen years, this is the classic account of how the United States got to the moon. It is a book for those who were part of Apollo and want to recapture the experience and for those of a new generation who want to know how it was done. It is an opinon shared by many Apollo veterans. Republished in 2004 with a new Foreword by the authors.

Review:

"Let’s talk about the Apollo mission itself. First published in 1989, Apollo: The Race to the Moon by Charles Murray and Catherine Cox focuses on the people who built the space programme. What can we learn by reading this book?

It’s a book about engineers and flight controllers who – very many of them – are the people who built the space programme, not only the hardware but the techniques and the methods. They figured out how to choreograph the precise orbital ballet of a rendezvous in space between two spacecraft that are each traveling at 17,500 miles an hour. They designed and built a space ship that could take three human beings to another celestial body and home again, re-entering the earth’s atmosphere at speeds of thousands of miles an hour with temperatures outside the vehicle climbing to 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit [2,760 degrees Celsius]. These are very daunting problems.

And then they had to figure out how to deal with every conceivable emergency that might come up during a flight, as we saw with Apollo 13. Apollo 13 is the best known example, and really epitomises the kind of “what if” thinking that NASA brought to these problems. Even today, many of the techniques that NASA developed for Apollo stand as monumental contributions to managing very complex operations or endeavours, involving many hundreds or even thousands of people. The Murray and Cox book is a superb account of how NASA managed a complex operation involving thousands of employees. In my work, I focus on the astronauts and their experiences, but that only tells half the story. The story of Apollo would not have been complete without this book." --Space historian Andrew Chaikinin in a FiveBooks Interview

More:
https://fivebooks.com/best-books/spac...

Source: FiveBooks

Another:
Release date: June 8, 2020

Rocket Age: The Race to the Moon and What It Took to Get There

by George D. Morgan (no photo)

Synopsis:

Rocket Age traces the history of spaceflight innovation from Robert Goddard’s early experiments with liquid fuel rockets, through World War II and the work of Wernher von Braun and his German engineers, on to the postwar improvements made by Sergei Korolev and his team in the Soviet Union, and culminating with the historic Moon walk made by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on July 20, 1969.

From designers to engineers, and even communication specialists and the builders who assembled these towering rockets, hundreds of thousands of people worked on getting humans to the Moon, yet only a few have been recognized for their contributions. George D. Morgan sets the record straight by giving these forgotten figures of space travel their due.

The son of rocket scientists who worked directly on NASA projects Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo, Morgan gives behind-the-scenes details on the famous missions, including a rare interview with Dieter Huzel –Wernher von Braun’s right-hand man and a chief engineer on every major manned space program.

Even the most voracious readers of US space flight history will discover things in this book that they have never read before. Rocket Age shines a light on those that have for too long been left out of the picture of the race to land on the Moon.

Thank you Jerome