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Volume 19, Number 4 2012 Volume 19, Number 4 OUEST 2012 THE HISTORY OF SPACEFLIGHT QUARTERLY www.spacehistory101.com Boeing’s Proposed LEM, 1962 THE THREE HEROES OF TELSTAR: MONITORING THE EARTH SPACEFLIGHT: BOEING’S FROM SPACE: THE FIRST COMMUNICATIONS ROPOSED THE RISE OF THE TSIOLKOVSKII – P LEM SATELLITE AN INTERVIEW WITH GODDARD – OBERTH INTERPRETATION JOHN MACDONALD AND ITS CURRENT VALIDITY IN MEMORIAM: ARMSTRONG, RIDE, MCCARTNEY Contents Volume 19 • Number 4 2012 www.spacehistory101.com 4 The Three Heroes of Spaceflight: Book Reviews The Rise of the Tsiolkovskii - Goddard - Oberth Interpretation and Its Current Validity 53 The Final Journey of the Saturn V By Michael J. Neufeld Book by Andrew Thomas & Paul Thomarios Review by Hunter Hollins 14 Boeing’s Proposed LEM By Paul Carsola 54 The Cosmonaut Who Couldn’t Stop Smiling: The Life and Legend of Yuri Gagarin 22 Telstar: The First Communications Satellite Book by Andrew L. Jenks 50 Years Since Its Launch (10 July 1962) Review by Roshanna P. Sylvester By David Whalen 56 U.S. Presidents and the Militarization 45 Monitoring the Earth from Space: of Space (1946-1967) An Oral History with Dr. John S. MacDonald Book by Sean N. Kalic By Barry Shanko Review by Rick W. Sturdevant 64 In Memoriam: Armstrong, Ride, McCartney 57 50 Years of Rockets and Spacecraft / NASA Marshall Space Flight Center By David Christopher Arnold Book by Ed Buckbee Review by Michael J. Neufeld Front Cover Credit: Boeing artist Jack Olson’s 1962 painting of Boeing’s proposed LEM. Credit: Boeing 58 Imagining Outer Space: European Astroculture in the Twentieth Century Book by Alexander G. T. Geppert Review by Janet Vertesi 59 Architecture for Astronauts: An Activity-Based Approach Book by Sandra Häuplik-Meusburger Review by Roger D. Launius 60 Atmospheric Science at NASA: A History Book by Erik M. Conway Review by Roger D. Launius 61 The Spacesuit Film: A History (1918-1969) Book by Gary Westfahl Review by Cathleen S. Lewis 62 The Economic Laws of Scientific Research Book by Terence Kealey Review by Roger D. Launius Fifty years ago, in 1962, employees at JPL gathered by the Mariner Venus probe. Image courtesy of Art LeBrun THE THREE HEROES OF SPACEFLIGHT: THE RISE OF THE TSIOLKOVSKII - GODDARD - OBERTH INTERPRETATION AND ITS CURRENT VALIDITY By Michael J. Neufeld impact on rocket technology and the The majority pattern was the mul- public imagination.2 This new litera- tiple independent discovery of the same ture provides the basis for the reexami- set of ideas, or at least parts of them, The single most enduring inter- nation of the validity of the “three between about 1908 and 1918, a quite pretation in space history credits three heroes” scheme that Clary calls for, and common occurrence in the history of thinkers with independently proving the not just an examination of its origins. It science and technology.3 For example, scientific and technological feasibility is my conclusion that, based on the the- after several years of racking his brains, of spaceflight in the late 19th and early oretical originality of Tsiolkovskii, the American physics student Robert 20th centuries: Konstantin Tsiolkovskii Goddard, and Oberth, and their role in Goddard realized the rocket was the in Russia and the USSR, Hermann sparking the formation of space soci- answer in early 1909, a year or so after Oberth in German-speaking central eties and stimulating other theorists to French aviation pioneer Robert Europe, and Robert Goddard in the publish, the traditional interpretation Esnault-Pelterie, and a year or so before United States. Precursors and contem- still is defensible, but at the cost of iron- the Transylvanian-German high-school poraries, such as Hermann Ganswindt ing out many complexities, such as the student Hermann Oberth. But despite and Robert Esnault-Pelterie, are usually intellectual foundations of the various early articles by Tsiolkovskii (1903 and assigned to a distinctly second rank. In space movements, and the contributions 1911-13) and Esnault-Pelterie (1913), a recent years, the historian of Soviet of other theorists like Robert Esnault- Belgian patent on advanced rocket spaceflight, Asif Siddiqi, has labeled Pelterie, Walter Hohmann, Yurii ideas issued to the French physician this scheme a “cliché” and the Goddard Kondratiuk, and Fridrikh Tsander. André Bing (1911), and an extremely biographer David Clary has called the obscure and flawed book by a French interpretation a 1960s invention that The Origins of the Interpretation utopian socialist, Victor Coissac “bears reexamination.”1 Before an international space- (1916), all of the pioneers operated in While the Tsiolkovskii-Goddard- flight movement emerged between isolation, and several were convinced Oberth (TGO) interpretation had its 1924 and 1933, there was a period of that they were the first in the world to origins in priority claims inside the several decades in which isolated ama- think of these ideas. Goddard, for one, international space advocacy move- teur and professional scientists, engi- was obsessed with his supposed priori- ment between the 1920s and 1950s, this neers, and inventors tried to imagine ty for the rest of his life. The few publi- paper traces its full-blown emergence, how to create a feasible technology to cations there were languished in obscu- at least in the English-language litera- solve the apparently utopian problem of rity, except in Russia, where the famous ture, to the post-1957 “space race.” travel to other celestial bodies. I cannot science journalist Iakov Perel’man pub- After the launch of Sputnik, the USSR re-tell that complicated story here, lished a book based on Tsiolkovskii’s trumpeted Tsiolkovskii’s founding role although I will later discuss some of the work, Mezhplanetnoe puteshestvie even more loudly than it had earlier, the priorities of the various writers and (“Inter- planetary Travel”) in 1915, the United States adopted Goddard as its thinkers that shed light on whether the world’s first popular, non-fiction dis- neglected hero, and the former TGO interpretation is still defensible. cussion of realistic spaceflight tech- Germans in the United States (notably Suffice it to say that the clear pattern is nologies. But a combination of the lin- Willy Ley and Wernher von Braun) tes- that there are two outliers who began as guistic barrier between Russia and the tified as to Oberth’s influence. The early as the 1880s to grasp the central west, the war, and the Revolution and interpretation hardened into a set pat- insight, that a greatly improved rocket Civil War, meant that this work was tern visible in most histories of space- was the key to space travel (an idea unknown outside Russia and soon flight written by advocates and journal- much more obvious in hindsight than it mostly forgotten within it. ists, especially those in English. was at the time). Both of them were The first work that made an inter- In recent years, new scholarship marginal eccentrics—a near-deaf national impact was Goddard’s A has made the historical context for the schoolteacher in Kaluga, Russia, Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes, early theorists and enthusiasts much Konstantin Tsiolkovskii, and a cranky which the Smithsonian Institution pub- richer, notably works by Siddiqi and inventor in Berlin, Germany, Hermann lished in early January 1920 with a James Andrews on Tsiolkovskii and the Ganswindt. But only the former went 1919 date on it. Frank Winter has early Russian/Soviet spaceflight move- on to develop a scientifically sound recently demonstrated that Goddard’s ment, and by Clary, J. D. Hunley, and body of theoretical work demonstrating proposal to hit the Moon with a rocket Frank H. Winter on Goddard and his space travel’s feasibility. carrying flash power accidentally pro- Q U E S T 19:4 2012 4 www.spacehistory101.com duced not just a newspaper flap in the topic in 1928 that rates (in typically or half-baked ideas. Only in the later United States, but also a worldwide nationalist fashion) Ganswindt as a volumes does he clearly assign credit. echo of media publicity, one that funda- misunderstood genius. He then devotes He devotes all of volume 7 to mentally reshaped science fiction and several pages each to Goddard, Oberth, Tsiolkovskii (including the reprint of the popular understanding of space- and the Austrian theoretician Franz many of his works), and volume 8 to (in flight.4 Wild rumors that Goddard Edler von Hoefft (in hindsight a minor this order): Esnault-Pelterie, Goddard, would soon launch himself to the Moon figure and even a quasi-fraud), but he Oberth, Hohmann, the German space- circulated around the globe in the never mentions any Russians. Willy flight skeptic Hans Lorenz, and then a 1920s, notably in central Europe and Ley’s small chronology of the history dozen others more briefly. Earlier in the Soviet Russia. The effect was such that of the rocket in November 1932 does series, in volume 4, Rynin makes clear the Austrian rocket experimenter Max discuss Tsiolkovskii, but not until 1924, that his fundamental list was five, not Valier wrote in 1930 that “even today the date of republication in the USSR of three, that is, including Esnault-Pelterie the broad mass of the public often mis- the Russian theorist’s earlier work, and and Hohmann.8 takenly believes that [Goddard] was the does not mention Esnault-Pelterie until Another key Soviet space popu- first originator of the modern space- he reaches 1927. The latter, in his com- larizer was Iakov Perel’man. Asif flight idea.”5 prehensive work L’Astronautique (he Siddiqi,
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