stickmaker | JOHT 73: History of Reaching for Space

The Joy of High Tech

Rodford Edmiston

Being the occasionally interesting ramblings of a major-league technophile.

Please note that while I am an engineer (BSCE) and do my research, I am not a professional in this field. Do not take anything here as gospel; check the facts I give. If you find a mistake, please let me know about it.

Reaching for the Stars

Quick! What was the first man-made object to exceed the speed of sound? Nope, sorry. Older. Much older. MUCH older. We don't know which specific object or exactly when, but here's an important clue: The crack of a whip is the tip exceeding Mach 1.

So what does this have to do with reaching the stars? Most workable methods of getting into space require exceeding the speed of sound. In spite of what many people thought in the early part of the Twentieth Century that turns out not to be particularly difficult (either going over Mach 1 or getting into space). Well, in terms of the technology involved. Getting into space is still very expensive and rather dangerous, at least for large objects, especially for those carrying people, though the situation has greatly improved in the last half century.

The basic technology of space flight has been around longer than most folks think. Jules Verne was familiar with early submarines, and used some of the technologies developed for them in designing his Columbiad for its cannon-launched trip around the Moon. The first velocity estimates for a minimum-altitude orbit would be accurately calculated a few years after that. The idea of an artificial satellite was popularized in the story The Brick Moon, which was printed in 1869.

People have been looking up since, well, there have been people. Climbing mountains wasn't enough to reach the stars, despite that legend with Heracles. We had to get higher. Perhaps in more ways than one.

One of the first technical evaluations of what was required to reach space was performed by Jules Verne, who hired a mathematician to help. His From the Earth to the Moon of 1865 was close to hard SF for the time, using the best of the technology and scientific knowledge of his day. Unfortunately, the first - and still best known - English translation was by someone unfamiliar was technical French. This has led to an underappreciation - to put it mildly - of the effort. Verne was later scathingly critical of First Men in the Moon claiming Wells had cheated with his "magical" antigravity substance. "Can Mr. Wells show me some 'Cavourite?'"

The first known serious, scholarly and detailed evaluation of the technology required to reach space was performed by Russian mathematician and teacher Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky (who was born eight years before the publication of From the Earth to the Moon). Inspired in part by Verne's story, he decided to examine the technical feasibility of various methods of reaching space. Working almost entirely through equations with very little experimentation, he determined that using certain liquid propellant combinations in powerful rockets would do the job. Along the way he came up with the intellectual concept (he knew very well there were no materials strong enough to actually build such a thing) of the orbital tower, this work being inspired by the Eiffel Tower. Later thinkers developed this into the beanstalk concept (aka the space elevator) after something in some fairly tale. ;-)

Tsiolkovsky did far more than develop the theory of rocketry (including the Rocket Equation). He wrote over 400 works, ranging in topic from animal biology through airship design to space flight. He designed - and built models of - all-metal dirigibles. He devised multiple mathematical proofs and physical laws. Most of which, unknown to him, had long been known in the scholarly world outside his isolated part of Russia. Tsiolkovsky built the first wind tunnel with an open test section, in Russia in 1897. His work inspired many, in spite of his isolation. This included Robert Goddard and Herman Oberth.

Robert Goddard began working to answer the same questions in 1899, largely inspired by reading The War of the Worlds. Since the universe is nonpartisan, he got the same answers as Tsiolkovsky. Eventually, he wrote a pamphlet on the topic: A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes. Unfortunately, the main early achievement of this document was to demonstrate the scientific ignorance of newspaper editors. Because of the editorial and public reaction to his pamphlet Goddard became a research recluse, much to the detriment of his work. He and his group found themselves unknowingly re-inventing things long part of the aviation industry and sometimes already available off the shelf. Still, he proved the concept of the superiority of liquid propellants with many actual rocket flights, and did much other valuable work.

Digression: When Wernher von Braun and his team were interviewed after surrendering to the Allies, they were astounded that the "rocketry experts" interrogating with them didn't know who Robert Goddard was. Goddard spent the war mostly developing RATO units with people like Bob Truax. He died in 1945.

Another Digression: Mark Goddard - who played Major Don West on the original Lost in Space - is a distant cousin of Robert Goddard.

Austro-Hungarian Hermann Oberth worked more in the public eye than did Goddard or Tsiolkovsky. Again, he did the math and determined the basic rules of the chemistry and physics of space flight. This included the benefits of a multi-stage or step rocket. Oberth began his academic career studying medicine, but was interrupted by World War One. In 1922 he attempted to earn a doctorate but was unsuccessful; his dissertation was dismissed as "utopian." Oberth later used the document for a self-published book, Die Rakete zu den Planetenräumen (By Rocket into Planetary Space). This was later greatly expanded and published as Wege zur Raumschiffahrt (Ways to Spaceflight).

Oberth joined the Verein für Raumschiffahrt (VfR) – the "Spaceflight Society" - and acted as a mentor to the mostly younger other members. The most famous (or infamous) member of this group was Wernher Von Braun. Oberth also worked as a consultant and built a rocket model for the film, Frau im Mond (The Woman in the Moon).

There are many others who performed the same work in the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries. Besides the developing backgrounds in science and technology making the concept of a space rocket more viable, there was a mood of progress, exploration and scientific examination in the air.

After speed, altitude is important for space travel. The first man-made object to reach the Stratosphere were the shells fired by the Paris Guns as part of the siege of Paris in the First World War. In fact, those shells retained the record until the first successful flight of the A-10 (better known as the V-2). Successful V-2 flights crossed the Kármán line (see below) to become the first man-made objects in space.

There is a long history of high altitude balloon and aircraft flights. None were useful for reaching orbit, or even space, until the Fifties.

The boundary of space used to be fifty miles. US rocket plane pilots who exceeded this altitude got their astronaut wings. This was later redefined to 100 kilometers. In most parts of the world most of the time this altitude is very close to something known as the Kármán line. This boundary was chosen because it is roughly the point where a vehicle flying fast enough to support itself with aerodynamic lift from the Earth's atmosphere would be flying faster than orbital speed. In other words, that's so high that the air is very, very thin. The first human to reach this altitude was Yuri Gagarin, in 1961, on his way to orbit. Two X-15 rocket plane flights exceeded this altitude in the mid-Sixties.

Once you have speed and altitude you need payload capacity. Ironically, the less sophisticated the technology the greater the need for payload capacity. Because your equipment – especially the control equipment – will be much heavier. Today, with modern electronics, most of the payload of launch vehicles can be reserved for actual cargo. Including passengers.

Because of the economies of scale, large rockets are actually cheaper than small rockets using the same technologies. However, experience has shown that overall making several small or medium rocket flights is better than one large one. Eggs and baskets and all that. Today, there are private spacecraft taking supplies, experiments and even people to the International Space Station.

There are many potential ways to reach space. For now, though, the only practical method is the plain, often simple rocket.