Aug 4 1949
From The Space Library
Co-founder of the post war Gesellschaft für Weltraumforschung, Heinz Gartmann, writes the following editorial on this day in response to Soviet news stories.
- Space research and space weapon
Why there can be no German rocket development
By Heinz Gartmann
The Moscow newspaper "Neue Zeit" recently quoted an article from "New York Journal and American", which among other things reported of the activity in 1948 in Stuttgart, the founding of the "Society for Space Research eV". The Soviet journal, in its commentary, claims that the society is a new armament center for missile weapons, and constructs and perfects weapons for the mass extermination of people. The head of the "Society for Space Research" comments on this.
For a long time rockets were nothing but a popular part of festive firework games. Today they are big politics. However, Germany retired from the race after it had been ahead of the rest of the world for many years. Most of the former research staff have responded to the call for foreign jobs, not only, as the Soviet Neue Zeit correctly quotes, to the United States, but also to the Soviet Union. While Professor Wernher von Braun is in Texas and New Mexico with the remnants of the V-2 holdings performing soundings, in the fall of 1946 chief engineer Kurt Schell, with the largest part of his former department at the Bavarian engine works (BMW) went to the Soviet Union. Here and there development has progressed since then.
The few former rocket engineers remaining in Germany are bound by the Control Council Law No. 25. The "Space Research Society" will closely monitor the possibilities of future space exploration through space travel. The association in Stuttgart deliberately uses an Oberthian rocket model as a symbol. But this rocket, in the seal of society, is also the only one in Stuttgart today!
Everyone agrees: The time of cheap experiments by small, active groups is over. Rocket research is a financial problem today. The development agencies for space weapons are involved in the budgets of the finance ministers of all countries (except Germany) with respectable posts. These expenditures turn into sums that will someday stand alongside the expenses for the development of the atomic bomb.
A brief estimate of the material cost for just one lunar fly-past may show this. The twin rocket, which recently reached more than 400 kilometers in altitude over the White Sands Proving Grounds in New Mexico, had a speed of 9000 kilometers per hour. However, 41,000 kilometers per hour are necessary to overcome the magnetism of the earth. Also different new American models are still far from this efficiency. In order to let only two persons fly around the moon once, without providing a stopover, one would have to construct a spaceship that weighs 34,000 tons at launch on Earth. In this estimate, we have taken into account the fuel currently used for rocket models. Better fuels, which already play a role in the plans of the fuel chemists, could lower the takeoff weight to 700 tons. Finally, if one looks at a landing on the moon, the fuel and energy problem grows to an extent that makes all further calculations utopian.
For the time being, the development of the lunar rocket and the long-range weapon are moving in the same direction: hence the mistrust that results from the German "Gesellschaft für Weltraumforschung eV" in Moscow. Nevertheless, there is a big difference between discussing future space exploration through space travel - as the "Society for Space Research" still seeks to do - and practical work on rockets - extermination weapons. How should my destitute group pursue practical rocket research today in Germany without test rigs and without laboratory facilities, and where should large missiles launch unnoticed and be kept secret in Germany? The deserts of Western America and the vast deserted areas of Siberia are far better suited for this purpose.
In a resolution, it encouraged an international gathering of representatives from all societies for space exploration, missile development and interplanetary connectivity. An in-depth engineering of many of the new problems, identified under the catchword "moon rocket" in the light of recent research, has been established, not forgetting that the time has come for rocket companies to do the main work. In the third decade of our century, the German "Association for Space" had carried out experiments on the rocket airfield near Berlin. Today, the "American Rocket Society" in New York, the "Pacific Rocket Society" in California and the "Detroit Rocket Society" in Detroit operate in this way. But even these active societies, which do not obstruct any law, are mainly only a forum for the exchange of experience.
After all, how great must the respect for German research be if a Soviet commentator interprets the modest work of a small scientific society - which he calls the "Hitlerite fascist gang" - as "preparation for new wars of annihilation". However, one can also find another form of appreciation, such as the prestigious British Interplanetary Society in London, which recently appointed Professor Hermann Oberth, the veteran rocket science researcher, its first Honorary Fellow, or the Detroit Rocket Society, which publishes in its journal a translation of Oberth's book "Wege zur Raumschiffahrt".
Neither a Western optimist nor an Eastern pessimist needs to expect that from the lovely hills around Stuttgart suddenly a moon rocket or even terrible new missile weapons would arise. This is reserved for those who receive a sizable share of government funds to actually build space weapons in Texas or Siberia. We Germans can and want to take only scientific part. It would be more than just right for us to scrap the models of the "space weapon" in East and West, so that all over the world the way would be cleared for peaceful space research.
