![]() ![]() As a result, the USA multiplied its efforts, employed at times more than 400,000 people in the Apollo program and finally won the prestigious race to the moon. In 1957 the Russians had shocked the Americans with "Sputnik", the first satellite, in 1959 with the lunar impact of "Lunik-2" and in 1961 with the first man in space, Juri Gagarin. With the first moon landing, the USA won the "space race", the race against the Soviet Union for the first man on the moon. Also US3751727A (1,4 MB) sketches a lunar space suit. ![]() US3534406A shows flexible movable joints for a lunar suit. Such suits also had to guarantee a certain mobility so that the astronauts could work on the moon. US3463150A (1,78 MB) describes a life-support system for a moon suit. Therefore special suits had to be developed, which make a short stay at the moon possible. The surface of the moon is a very hostile place for humans. US3181821A and US3175789A describe landing buffers which are suitable for landing on the moon. Therefore special attention was paid to the construction of the landing supports and their underlay. Before the first moon landing the consistency of the lunar surface was not known very exactly. ![]() This manned lunar module ("Eagle") was then decoupled from the space capsule ("Columbia") in a lunar orbit and steered to the lunar surface. "Combined shelter and vehicle" (US219690S)įor the actual landing on the moon a special lunar module had to be developed, as shown in US219690S for example. Brauns rocket, patented under US2967393A, served as the starting point for the development of the mighty Saturn V rocket, which brought Armstrong and his colleagues to the moon. It claimed thousands of lives - both during its manufacture in murderous forced labor in the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp and during its missions as the first ballistic ground-to-ground missile in attacks on the inner cities of London or Antwerp.Īfter the Americans had "taken over" Braun and other German rocket pioneers after the Second World War, he developed the first large rockets, which were also powered by liquid fuel. It became known under its propaganda name "Vergeltungswaffe (Retaliation Weapon) 2" (V2). ![]() His "Aggregat 4" was the first rocket to reach space in 1944. For his projects he literally went over dead bodies and built rockets first for the Nazis, then for the Americans. Wernher von Braun later became the most important manager of early space travel in the West. Wernher von Braun in front of the Saturn V engines In 1929 Oberth filed one of the earliest patent applications, namely " Vorrichtung zum Antrieb von Fahrzeugen durch den Rückstoß ausströmender Verbrennungsgase (Device for driving vehicles by the recoil of escaping combustion gases)" ( DE570511A). He applied for many more patents, the last one being a launching apparatus for rockets ( US2307125A) in 1940.Īnother root of the Apollo program lay in the "Verein für Raumschifffahrt": Rocket pioneers such as Wernher von Braun and Hermann Oberth experimented with liquid-fuelled rockets in Berlin-Reinickendorf in 1928. Misjudged during his lifetime and dismissed as a fantasist, he succeeded in launching the first rocket with liquid-propelled engine in 1926 in Massachusetts. Already in 1913 the American rocket pioneer Robert Goddard (1882-1945) applied for a patent for a "Rocket Apparatus" ( US1102653A). "Rocket apparatus" by Robert Goddard, 1913 (US1102653A)Ī rocket was recognised relatively early on as the preferred means of transport for a manned space flight. ![]()
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