Current and Future space exloration

While great leaps were made by both the Soviets and the United States, there are still more giant leaps to be made. One leap that has yet to be made is sending humans to the closest planet, Mars. The company, Space X, has been created with that one goal in mind. They were created by Elon Musk, and are backed by his financial support. With his support they have personally been able to make leaps with in the rocketry community, most notably with their reusable rocket called the grasshopper. This rocket has the capability of launching a satellite into orbit and being able to return back to the launch pad in a vertical position. Previously the rockets were a one-time use machine but not with this advancement, the cost of going into orbit would be able to be reduced. While going to Mars is amazing and a great leap forward, that journey would not be for a common citizen. Sir Richard Branson has been able to pioneer the common citizens means to a space adventure with his company, Virgin Galactic. Starting in 2004 it has been a top competitor in this market, creating new technology to cheapen the cost of a ticket. One advance they made was the development of the idea that the rocket is first brought high up into the air before it is launched. This is accomplished through the use of specially designed airplane which brings the rocket into high altitude before it is released and launched. This does come with some risks though like when a test pilot was killed during a testing stage of the rocket. Once they get to space though, they can utilize another continuing advancement called the ion thruster. This is not an engine nor a motor since this is a small continuous force over a long friction less journey. This truster works by ionizing a specialized gas which then in turn creates plasma which is shot out the back of the rocket. This truster is not like a conventional propulsion system since an average household fan creates more thrust than one truster does. However, with advancing technology, scientist are hoping to up the power so this technology can be utilized to reach Mars cheaply. Currently it is being used in the satellite that passed Pluto, New horizons, and in the proses has worked very reliably due to no moving parts. A possibility for this technology could be reaching asteroids to be mined. NASA has predicted that we may need to mine asteroids for their minerals. A company, Planetary Resources, heard this call and was created in 2012. They have been able to utilize another advancing technological field in space exploration call the Cube Sat. This is a mini personal satellite that anyone can launch into low earth orbit to do whatever the satellite is designed to do. Planetary Resources has been able to outfit these personal satellites to contain new technology that they wish to test out in space. With all of the advancing technology in space exploration it is only a mystery what is a head for the human race.

The Soviets side of the Space rave

While the Unites States were able to make a quick leap into space, the Soviets made an even bigger one leading to the beginning of what is known as the Space Race. This race and the leaps made by the Soviets was a great concern for United States since these feats were able to be translated into various advancements in the Soviets quest to obtain a nuclear tipped intercontinental ballistic missile. Their first great leap into space was the launch and orbit of Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite to orbit Earth. This feat signified that the Soviets had the capability to reach space, causing the united states to worry about what else they might have the capability of reaching. An interesting fact about Sputnik is that anyone with a HAM radio could listen to the distinctive beeps as it passed over their heads. Sometimes people could even see the satellite as it passed over their heads with the help of a telescope or a pair of binoculars. This accomplishment was followed up three years later (1960) with the launch and survival of the first living animals into space, two dogs names Stelka and Belka. This accomplishment showed that the Soviets had the technology to send humans into space and come back safely.  This feat is exactly what they did, sending Yuri Gargari, into space in 1961 and only a year later put the first woman into space. While all of these feats were a great concern to the Unites States, none of them would have been possible without the help of German Rocket scientists. The Americans were able to capture almost all of the rocket scientists and information pertaining to the Nazi rocket program but in the chaos fallowing the end of the war, left some behind for the Russians to get.  In the beginning the Soviets conducted their rocket research with in Germany since the facilities were preexisting there.  However, as time went on Soviet officials grew weary and decided to move the research to the main land of the Soviet Union.  There they were under the command of Sergei Pavlovich Korolev, the lead Soviet rocket scientist. He is the one that has been credited with the creation and advancement of the soviet space program.  With only a few blue prints of the German V-2 rocket available to him, he was able to transform the V-2 in a new and advanced missile with additional boosters. This missile would later be transformed into the launch vehicle used in almost all of the advancements made by the Soviets. Just before his death, Korolev was working towards beating the Americans to the moon through the development of an extremely large rocket called the N1. This five stage rocket would have the capability to get to moon in one shot however it was quickly brushed aside after Korolev’s death and four failures within two minutes of the launch.  Korolev was a brilliant man who worked towards the advancement of the Soviet Space program but was rob of his life at the height of his career.  No one can deny that the Soviets were able to make manly leaps forward that have been able to advance society and space travel.

 

Americans Vs Soviets, The American Side

The conclusion from the secret meeting is to surrender to the Americans as soon as possible. To accomplish this mission, Von Braun sent his own brother, Magnus, to talk to the Americans to arrange for their surrender due to his ability to speak broken English. However, this was not truly helpful since the first few American troop he encountered were unable to understand why he was truly there. One theory that they had was that Magnus was trying to sell his brothers to the Americans however the communication problem was quickly fixed and passes were granted for all of the Germans.

When Magnus returns it is reported that all of the scientists jumped for joy, and ecstatically greeted him home.  They all piled into three vehicles and all raced off to the American camp where they were quickly welcome yet fiercely interrogated. Due to Von Braun’s young looks, none of the American troops believed that he truly was the expert rocket scientist.  Once the troops confirmed who Von Braun was, they sent him to D.C to be debriefed and be put into a team of other engineers and scientists. Even with the Americans, Von Braun was unable to work on his true mission, going into space. He was sent to White Sands, New Mexico where his team was designated to study the remaining V-2 rockets with different payloads.  He was eventually able to design the Redstone missile for the USA however with the advancing space race, Von Braun was called up to help.  He was able to design the first rocket that the USA used to send their first satellite to space and with this advancement was able to get his team American citizenship. Later that year he decided to start to write for science magazines, eventually coming up with the idea of a space station.

 

vonbraun-rockets

(Von Braun posing in front of all the rockets h helped design for the USA)

He was then moved to NASA in Huntsville Alabama where he was made director of the center and lead architect for the Saturn rocket. There are three classes of rockets, the Saturn 1 Saturn 1b, and the Saturn V. The first two rocket classes were designed to send humans into only orbit while the Saturn V was deigned to send humans to the moon. NASA was able to use the Saturn V for their Apollo missions and to launch their first space station, the Skylab, into orbit. The most notable mission that used the Saturn V rocket was Apollo 11. Within this mission the crew preformed scientific experiments but also where the first men to walk on the moon.  Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong and Michal Collins were the crew with the mission with Neil Armstrong taking the title of first man on the moon. With this immense success, the potential for tragedies happen. Over the course of all the Apollo missions there were only three missions were a tragedy occurred. The one mission that everyone remembers is Apollo 13. This mission was marked as a tragedy due to an on board explosion causing the crew to sling shot around the moon instead of landing on it, to head home. Most people will remember it by the movie where Tom Hanks is the main character

S-IC_engines_and_Von_Braun

(Von Braun with a Saturn V rocket engine)

End of WW2

As Von Braun perused his Ph.D, he was also busy working on a new rocket design, the A1. This incorporated his new and advanced liquid fueled rocket engine. After numerous experiments testing the rocket, the design team and Von Braun finally decided on their final design of the combustion chamber, resulting in the finalization of the rocket design. With this rocket design they started to produce A1 rockets. This rocket did not have the capability to be used in war fare; it was simply just another experiment that Von Braun was conducting. Over the course of numerous experiments of launching the A1s over the Baltic sea, Von Braun was able to improve upon the design and produce an even better design. To conduce these tests the Nazi army produced a large compound to house 2,000 scientists, and 4,000 other personnel.

Peenemunde

( secret rocket base where Von Braun is based out of. Image from: https://www.google.com/search?q=v2+factory&espv=2&biw=1280&bih=729&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjFqJjK3b_NAhVE1CYKHZmHC9oQ_AUIBigB#tbm=isch&q=v2+Peenem%C3%BCnde&imgrc=d_wAWcK_ND6AJM%3A)

After many years of testing Von Braun and his team were able to successfully launch the first A4 rocket on October 3, 1942. While this was a successful flight, it does not mean that the missile is able to be used reliable on the battle field. To make it a proven system, Von Braun took even more of a leadership position and was able to make the flow the of operations better through his strategic personnel placement in key positions and his own excitement about what he could achieve.  However, the British started to catch on to the ongoing testing at this compound. Only a year after the first successful test, hundreds of RAF bombers descended on the compound and crippling its operations. The Nazi believed that they needed to shift their operations to a more secure site however Von Braun was to stay at the old compound to research better rocket designs and help on the Luftwaffe’s jet aircraft. His research was halted when Von Braun was arrested by the Gestapo on charges that he only is only wanting to develop the rocket for space travel not for military purposes. They thought that since he wanted to use the rocket for space travel and he can pilot his own plane, that he would eventually run to the allies and turn over all of his previous work. He was eventually released due to pressure from Hitler and Munitions and Armaments Minister Albert Speer on the Gestapo. Historians believe that he was initially arrested for his denial of Heinrich Himmler’s request for him to join the SS.

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( Heinrich Himmler, Google images: https://www.google.com/search?q=himmler&espv=2&biw=1280&bih=685&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjRmKSZ3r_NAhVD4CYKHeGQBdIQ_AUIBigB#imgrc=4IFxrCHaXiDv1M%3A)

Eventually Himmler was able to get back at Von Braun by forcefully moving the most current rocket, the V-2, out of research/ production to full-fledged production. He moved the production to an underground work shop in central Germany where he forced local concentration camp workers to not only build the rockets but to also build the underground facility. Here many innocent civilians were worked so hard that many of them died in the process, however this was all in vain. The v-2 rockets were not ready to be mass produced, it would be another year until it truly would be ready. Once the production of V-2 rockets could be established, they were launched at Paris, London just to name a few. The use of these rockets were short lived though. The Russian army was advancing from East while the USA was advancing from the West. Von Braun was terrified for his life since he stated that “I had ten orders on my desk. Five promised death by firing squad if we moved, and five said I’d be shot if we didn’t move.” Seeing that he was in quite a predicament and that if he was to stay he would be captured by the Russians. Calling a secret meeting with other lead scientists, they decided to go and surrender to the USA. This decision allowed them to leave the war with them lives.

Work Cited :

“V2ROCKET.COM – Wernher Von Braun.” V2ROCKET.COM – Wernher Von Braun. N.p., n.d. Web. 23 June 2016.

Early History of Rocketry

Those that have researched into to beginning of the space age will easily recognize the name, Werner von Braun. He is considered the founding father of modern rocketry, contributing to numerous leaps in this field. Early on in his life he was given a book about going to the planets and rocket for the travel, capturing his attention and his mind. From then on he decided that he wanted to do what the book illustrated, and started to conduct his own experiments. One experiment consisted of numerous homemade solid fuel rocket engines being strapped to the back of a wagon. All of the engines were light, driving the wagon down the road into a crowd of any people, luckily no one was hurt.

As he started to conduct more in-depth experiments, the world turned very grim with the eruption of World War Two. It is a common fact that the Nazi’s are considered to be one of the cruelest societies in modern times, Von Braun would not have been able to peruse his dream of going in to space. At a young age he always wanted to go in to space but when he arrived at the age where he could actually peruse his dream, the Nazi’s were in power. They banned all rocket experiments unless they pertained to having a military purpose. The defeated Von Braun realized that he only way he could peruse his dream would be to put aside his own morals and help with the creation of what would eventually become the first missile.  He was not alone in this endeavor to obtain the recognition and more importantly the funding from Adolf Hitler. Members of his society, Verein für Raumschiffahrt, and himself presented various rocket ideas to Nazi Army officials. In the eyes of the Nazi, almost every rocket present to them was horrible, only Von Braun’s design caught the attention of the Nazis. What set his design apart from everyone else’s was his innovation and the use of the liquid fueled rocket engine.

 

broun with nazi

(Von Braun with Nazi officials)

Previous designs saw the advancement of solid fueled rocket engines, yet they were only able to improve upon the design to minutely gain better thrust and duration from the engine. However, with Von Braun’s engine there were vast amounts of variable that could alter the flight to become better than the best solid fuel rocket engine. This is due to the fact that he could change the about of fuel being burned subsequently controlling the trust of the engine mid-flight. Previously a solid fuel engine would be light and take off, unable to be stopped since the chemical reaction producing the thrust is extremely hard to stop mid-flight. But Von Braun’s rocket engine’s trust was controllable mid-flight through various valves controlled by an onboard computer.  These valves controlled the flow rate of the liquid propellant subsequently making it have more thrust as more propellant is added and a lower thrust as the flow is restricted.

 

solid vs liquid

(Liquid fueled rocket compared against a solid propellant rocket)

Being able to show the Nazi Army that his rocket engine had the capability to surpass the old solid fuel engines, Von Braun signed a contract to experiment and eventually build rockets capable of reaching targets for war.  The first step that he and the Army agreed on was to send him back to school to obtain a Ph.D in Physics with a dissertation about theoretical and practical problems that liquid fueled rocket engines would face. At the same time, he was also designing his first liquid fueled rocket with member that previously were on his old rocket society. This rocket would become the stepping stone for all future rocket designs, allowing the human civilization to be able to make giant leaps in science and technology.

 

Work cited:

Hollingham, Richard. “V2: The Nazi Rocket That Launched the Space Age.” BBC. N.p., 3 Sept. 2014. Web. 19 June 2016.

http://www.v2rocket.com/start/chapters/vonbraun.html