US Space Shuttle orbiters played vital roles in building the International Space Station But the Shuttles pioneering reusable spaceplane designs would prove costly in both resources and human lives
INTRODUCTION The dream of spaceflight has been with us since the 17th century Johannes Kepler decoded planetary motion and Isaac Newton formulated force motion and gravity Another great visionary was Konstantin Tsiolkovsky an early 20th-century schoolteacher who described practical methods for getting into space To achieve those dreams it took two World Wars hard-won engineering know-how and a dangerous rivalry between two great superpowers And it took guts the personal courage of pioneer astronauts who rode their towering rockets into the unknown US astronaut Alan Shepard takes a bow on the deck of rescue ship USS Lake Champlain May 5 1961 The first American and second person into space he should have launched seven months earlier But his Mercury capsule in the background was not ready 05
ROCKETS INTO SPACE The first space rockets were dreamed up by theoretical visionaries hobbyists and the designers of weapons of war ROCKETEERS Late-19th-century writers Jules Verne and H G Wells were the first to popularize the idea of spaceflight Their works inspired many including Konstantin Tsiolkovsky a Russian schoolteacher with an unquenchable thirst for knowledge In 1903 Tsiolkovsky formulated how a craft might actually leave Earth by attaining escape velocity He also suggested the fuels to achieve this would be 1 Tsiolkovsky worked out that a rocket would need to accelerate in stages to escape Earth’s gravity GODDARD’S NELL 1 IGNITER Gunpowder 2 ROCKET ENGINE 3 FUEL SUPPLY LINE 4 LIQUID-OXYGEN SUPPLY 5 LIQUID-OXYGEN TANK 6 ALCOHOL BURNER To Victorian science fantasy author Jules Verne imagined going to the Moon in a capsule fired from a giant gun liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen Tsiolkovsky was a theorist It was American physicist Robert Goddard who made the first liquid-fueled rocket Goddard’s Nell launched in 1926 reached an altitude of just 41 feet 13 m but it proved the concept Goddard devoted all his free time to building bigger and better rockets but he could not get funding from the US government Rather than in the US Goddard’s work was noticed more in Germany which in the 1920s was gripped by a rocket craze The leading pioneer was Herman Oberth center who published the best-selling book Ways to Spaceflight in 1929 Oberth helped found rocket societies where physicists and engineers created more powerful rockets One of Oberth’s leading lights was young aristocrat Wernher von Braun second from right 06 2 3 4 Nozzle vaporize liquid oxygen 7 FUEL TANK 5 6 7 Heat shield Frame stand Oxygen feed pipe
it was our team that first succeeded in reaching outer space Wernher von Braun rocket scientist Germany’s A4 rocket the world’s first spacefaring ballistic missile was successfully test-launched in late 1942 The A4 featured innovative chemical-fueled turbo pumps and gyroscopic guidance systems It was the culmination of nine years of research and development Up to 3,225 V-2 ROCKETS were launched in COMBAT most aimed at MAJOR CITIES SUPERSONIC VENGEANCE In 1933 the Nazis rose to power in Germany and outlawed civilian rocket societies Rocket scientist Wernher von Braun decided to work for the military rather than give up research In World War II missiles did not become important until 1942 By then Germany’s plan to take Europe was failing Von Braun’s A-4 missile was readied for mass production and renamed V-2 Vergeltungswaffeor Retaliation Weapon but did not become useable for another two years As Germany retreated in 1944 V-2s were unleashed against England But it was too little too late In 1945 Germany was invaded from east and west Both Americans and Russians were keen to get their hands on V-2 technology Von Braun seen here in a cast and his team deliberately surrendered to the US Army which also captured their materials Postwar German scientists were offered work designing missiles for the US As they tested captured V-2s they began to probe the edge of space A V-2-derived two-stage rocket called Bumper reached 244 miles 393 km The US and Soviet Union first competed in a race to design missiles for nuclear weapons The space race did not start until the surprise launch of Soviet satellite Sputnik 1 left in 1957 07
