Obviously a genius. Not his native language, but he delivers a perfect speech with no notes and no filler words like "um" and "uh." Just precise thoughts conveyed clearly. Also the level of detail is just right for the audience, and nothing important is omitted. Imagine if the Russians had gotten him.
I used to live about two miles from the Armed Forces Staff College in Norfolk, Virginia where this was filmed when I was in the Navy stationed at Naval Station Norfolk. Everything he's saying is simple science and physics, so most people should be able to follow this presentation without being lost because he thoroughly explained everything so that anyone could understand, so you don't need a PhD to understand this presentation.👍
I grew up in Alabama and Wernher was a major figure in our Alabama History Classes. Remember when positive history was taught in public schools? Alabama gets little credit for development of missile and space technology but Huntsville's Red Stone Arsenal was on the forefront. I am proud to have Wernher as a citizen of the United States and Alabama.
Positive history is still taught in public schools. It's just that they also teach about some of the not so positive things so we don't repeat the same mistakes, and people who base their identities on those not so positive things don't like those not so positive things being portrayed as not so positive. People who ignore the positive history being taught and focus on the negative history are just upset that their toxic world view is being cast in a negative light.
@@JoeOvercoat I think a lot of history is positive, but not by our modern standards. A lot of history is about flawed people overcoming massive obstacles and trying to not be killed and tortured every step of the way. Granted, there is a lot of blatantly evil stuff that happens, but the survivors of most of these tragedies are examples of how strong the human spirit is. It takes a lot of effort to transcend bitter resentment and useless suffering, and we have many examples from every culture of the everyday heroes that have done it.
Werner Von Braun´s Tombstone has "Psalm 19:1" engraved on it: The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament shows his handiwork. Its the only thing which is added to his Tombstone besides his Name and Birth-Death date. Must be something important to him.
@@IronCypher No one is more "worked up" than the flatties who keep trying to convince everyone they're right. No one with half a brain takes you guys and your make believe BS seriously.
@@cybercat1531 Utah salt FLATS 100s of miles of FLAT LANDS. Eye LEVEL water LEVEL sea LEVEL WHY ALL THE LEVELS use your God given senses The horizon is a HORIZONTAL LINE 360° always!!! lighthouse prove level earth Observable Testable Repeatable LEVELFACTS Shalom
Much of what Von Braun says about orbiting stations and even space suits trace back to Herman Potocnik's 1929 book, The Problem of Space Travel. Von Braun was a key figure in both the German WWII rocket program that attacked England, as well as later Cold War United States Apollo Moon race. This lecture was filmed before a man had ever been put into space, 1955, and before establishing of the NASA by President Eisenhower for peaceful civilian space exploration.
@@Mishn0 You're going to need to prove the radius value of the earth for that claim. The radius value has been debunked thousands of times. No radius value means they don't have a tangent point for the orbital telemetry. The jig is up. We know it's fake.
@@slow-mo_moonbuggy LOL, ignoring the fact that you can look at a website to find out when you can see the ISS passing by in its orbit overhead with your naked eyes...or, take a pair of binoculars out an hour or so after sunset and look up and see literally dozens of satellites in an hour or so... Why would you need to know the precise radius of the earth to be able to achieve orbit around this obviously spherical planet? If you're off by a little, it would change the orbital velocity and thus the values of apogee and perigee, but not whether you'd be able to get into orbit. I think you flattards are just trolling, no one could really be that dumb.
I swear one of those officers is Gen. Curtis LeMay. He gets visibly excited every time Wernher Von Braun mentions the possibility of bombing ground targets from orbit.
@@billw1266 Nah....looks a bit like LeMay but not him. Freeze at that point and then look up LeMay image...he had closer set eyes and a more pronounced chin/lower jaw.
Not a single yawn from the audience. No-one nodding off. No perplexed look. Total attention retained throughout the 30 minute lecture. Braun certainly had advanced knowledge of near space dynamics at the time. And given in excellent English. Impressive indeed.
To his credit he did say that the 9G was for sake of maximum efficiency and that lower G forces were doable with a "slight increase in the amount of fuel."
Even the X-15 program, which first reached there, hadn't flown yet. And as von Braun predicted, they had to use thrusters, not wing control surfaces to orient their spacecraft.
How did Von Braun acquirer all of this knowledge of space travel without any object ever leaving the earths atmosphere at the time of this lecture? Amazing!
@61gisele Thanks, He listed quite a few unknowns in hims lecture and it would have only taken 1 miscalculation for a major catastrophe to occur and this was back before computers as we know them. I guess the first Astronaut were much braver then I originally thought.
@@tsfullerton a very good 'claim to fame' in my opinion, the only historical figure that I saw in person was Douglas Badar the legless fighter pilot from WW2. in the late 70s.
Von Braun was more "amoral" than "immoral". He didn't care who was paying the bills, he didn't care about the "collateral damage" of slave labor, he didn't care about the "end user's" application of his work. He just wanted to be able to build rockets and advance the science of space flight. He wasn't a weapons builder, he was a space scientists who built weapons for the Nazis because that's where the easy money was. After the war the easy money was the US Army and later, NASA. The Army's Redstone rocket, which eventually launched Alan Shepard's first sub-orbital flight, was an only slightly improved V-2.
He was arrested by the SS at one point because they suspected he cared more about spaceflight with his rockets and developing weapons for the Reich. He was only eventually released because he was essential to the V-2 project... OL J R :)
and one decade later, alexei leonov would live von braun's dream when he became the first man to go on a spacewalk, wearing the human-fitting suit that von braun dismissed as overly complex
Frankly, I was disappointed he didn't discuss the exploitation of concentration camp labour in inhuman conditions as part of this 🙁 Perhaps he forgot? Or, maybe that was all somebody else's fault?
@@moggridge1 There was virtually no discussion of any such thing at this time. The kvetching about Auschwitz didn't start until later. It really wasn't until the later part of the 60s that anyone cared about this stuff, mostly because that is around the time Jews began to have a big presence in the academy.
If he was an "officer in the SS" it was because he had to be in order to build rockets. He didn't want to kill the Jews, he just didn't care if they were killed if that got him the funding. Not a ringing endorsement of his morals, but a point to consider. He thought space was more important than some random people he didn't know. I bet that's how a lot of scientists are if they aren't under public scrutiny.
10/10 for a very good comment; short, sweet and to the point...well said! How do I know?....I was there in the 50's, buying all von Braun Space Frontier books with Chesley Bonestell illustrations....still got them.
This talk must have been a huge wake-up call for the assembled brass. Some of them were born and raised when airplanes were an exotic rarity. During their military careers they have seen air power become even more important than sea power, and science developing weapons beyond what their early 20th century education could comprehend. Future officers will need to lay in a lot of study of basic science in order to keep abreast of future strategic and tactical developments. ETA: OMG it's General Groves!
Wernher von Braun's quote when the V2 rocket was first used was "The rocket worked perfectly, but it fell on the wrong planet." This was a reference to his desire to send rockets into space rather than for military purposes.... Then he also worked for Disney after he worked for nasa....
The SS arrested him at one point, because they figured he was more interested in space than military applications of his rockets and missiles. They only released him because he was essential to the V-2 project. OL J R :)
He worked for the US Army. His audience was military big-wigs. Should von Braun have talked about Teflon? Armies kill people and break things. That was a part of what he talked about in this lecture tailored to fit his audience. Something wrong with that?
i am sorry to interrupt herr von braun, but what the hell is that earth central elliptical orbit with perigee and apogee being 90 degrees from each other?!
Everything he said has come to pass, that's quite a feat considering in 1955, that was far before sputnik and state of the art then was just suborbital en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1955_in_spaceflight The only thing that didn't happen was the actual type of craft made to realize his vision. He goes from space flight, planetary exploration, space station, space telescope for astronomy and earth surveillance, space biology research and materials research, all integral to all space agencies today, worldwide.
Is 2 years really "far before"? The Soviets were already taking space a lot more seriously by the time this was filmed, that's why they shocked the world with Sputnik only 2 years after this film, and launched a probe at the moon only 2 years after that, despite the USA having far more funding.
There was also an admiral with a seegar. Flag officers had a floor ashtray between chairs, with lower-ranked officers using a regular ashtray or empty coffee cup in their laps. Smoking was catered-to in just about every aspect of society aside from combustible atmospheres and SOME medical facilities.
There was No GPS. He left his legacy as truth on his tombstone. "PSALMS 19:1" .19 The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork.. He and his best buddy Walt Disney knew they could not go outside the Firmament since Operation Fishbowl 1962.
At the very start of the lecture the senior officer is seen walking to the front, also in view are the officers making up the audience. A quick comparison of those present suggests they all appear to be of roughly the same height and build, slightly receding and look very alike to one another. Rocket Man Van Braun shares not a single likeness and may as well be from a different planet. Why present what is undoubtedly a complicated set of technical sciences in the most basic dumbed down level possible? Clearly this production was built for purpose, convincing the general public to adopt their rocket reality. From satellites to space and all the things inbetween, their programmes our programming. 'Watch the birdie' is akin to 'have a gander at the prop' and serve as 'targeted suggestive' propaganda.
At the time there was little distinction between missile and rocket. They were interchangeable terms. This is the time they diverged, thanks to Dwight Eisenhower's initial requirement that manned space be a civilian enterprise. That failed and von Braun, working for the Army, snatched our cookies out of the fire and prevented us from experiencing utter failure. Good on him. This video shows how essential he was to technologies which saved millions of lives so far and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. Von Braun stands entirely vindicated by his redemptive efforts after the war. Salute!
@@RockinRobbins13 True, but NASA wouldn't be formed until the Space Act of 1958, well after Sputnik and mostly as a response to it. Eisenhower knew the military saw space as "the next high ground" and were all over it, fighting their usual turf wars. Eisenhower and the brass basically gave the first orbital satellite mission to the Naval Research Lab's "Vanguard" rocket, because it was being conducted by an all-American team. The Army's team was Von Braun and his Germans working at Redstone Arsenal for DARPA. Von Braun had been capable of inserting a small payload into orbit for some time by the fall of 1957, using his "Jupiter C" rocket which was a modified Redstone with a couple of aggregate solid propellant Sergeant rocket motor upper stages, which was being used to launch various reentry vehicle shapes and materials on suborbital trajectories, then using the upper stages to DRIVE them back down at extremely high speeds into the atmosphere to develop heat shield technology for ICBM warheads. There was a LOT of experimental work going on at the time and nobody was quite sure how to do it. The brass had forbidden Von Braun's team from attempting an orbital launch, to permit the Naval Research Lab team time to finish their Vanguard and launch it, per their orders from upstairs. IIRC they even short-fueled Von Braun's Jupiter-C launches to prevent the possibility of it "accidentally" going into orbit. OF course the Soviets caught them off guard with Sputnik 1, some said Eisenhower DELIBERATELY allowed the Soviets to launch a satellite first in order to establish the "freedom of the skies" doctrine, that a satellite in orbit can overfly a country without violating their "airspace" like an aircraft overflight would, so that the coming age of spy satellites couldn't be complained about as a violation of their airspace or whatever... It's a rather flimsy argument with no supportive evidence that I've seen, but the argument or reason is valid enough, but I'm of the opinion "never contribute to secret activities motivated by uncommon insight what is more readily explained by pure happenstance". At any rate, the Soviets got to orbit first, and the NRL's Vanguard rocket famously exploded on the pad after a lifting off a few feet and falling back, in the famous "Flopnik" or "Kaputnik" fiasco in front of the world press. After that Eisenhower reluctantly turned Von Braun's team loose to put up a US satellite as soon as possible, which became Explorer 1, which discovered the Van Allen Radiation Belts nobody knew were there. Eisenhower had held them back in the first place because he didn't like how it would look in the world press to have the first US satellite put up by a "German" team, though most had become US citizens by that time (including Von Braun who basically led the others to do so by example). Eisenhower would have preferred it be an "All American" team to get the credit for the first satellite, as it would make better press. BUT the NRL's failure with Vanguard left him with basically no choice-- better a German emigre American team put up a satellite than NO US satellite AT ALL. Sputnik had created quite a stir in the US and led to the conclusion (erroneous) that there was a missile gap and the Soviets were ahead technologically and the US had fallen behind and education was insufficiently rigorous and not preparing students for the challenges of the future to prevent a "Red World" and all sorts of basically hysteria... though a lot of good came out of it in the end. BUT it was all a lot of unpleasant noise to the politicians at the time, some of whom made a lot of hay out of it (including Kennedy in his Presidential bid against Nixon in 1960). Later! OL J R :)
@@lukestrawwalker _"some said Eisenhower DELIBERATELY allowed the Soviets to launch a satellite first in order to establish the "freedom of the skies" doctrine, that a satellite in orbit can overfly a country without violating their "airspace" like an aircraft overflight would, so that the coming age of spy satellites couldn't be complained about as a violation of their airspace or whatever... It's a rather flimsy argument"_ But your position here is internally inconsistent. First you say _"Von Braun had been capable of inserting a small payload into orbit for some time by the fall of 1957,"_ And that totally undermines your second contention that the legal aspect was just a "flimsy excuse." And although you contend _"no supportive evidence that I've seen"_ but the entire issue was conducted in public at the United Nations. During the International Geophysical Year, the US and USSR were committed to launching satellites. However, the Russians, at the United Nations raised the point that under international law, property rights extended from their borders on the ground upwardly an infinite distance in altitude, therefore any overflights by satellite over the USSR would have grave consequences. This was the impetus for the formation of NASA, a completely civilian (American had nothing to do with it. NASA also used foreigners, especially Canadians) agency, and the Vanguard team was an entirely civilian effort. Avoiding the appearance of a military satellite was of prime importance, something that was also repeatedly on the six o'clock news. Even a civilian satellite would encounter international law trespass problems, so Eisenhower DID make the conscious decision to let the Russians launch first, since they were the sponsor of the "overflights are illegal" argument. If the Soviets overflew the US and we made no claim of trespass, then the law would have to change and the Russians couldn't protest, since it was THEIR satellite doing the trespassing. This aerospace historian, Amy Shira Teitel, can clear up any discrepancies if I've got anything wrong. Basically Eisenhower had proposed an international treaty designating the space above countries to be considered open, with overflight by both countries to allow reconnaissance as a means of opening up information on the activities of both sides as a way of promoting peace instead of paranoia. The Soviets vigorously opposed that concept, closing down America's ability to orbit a spacecraft first. Allowing the Soviets to do it first would tie their hands and keep them from arguing against it. This video covers that, although not covering American space policy in the late 50's in as detailed a manner as her other video I watched, but can't seem to find right now. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-0pC7Aa3s00Y.html However this video lays out the facts that required the Soviets to orbit first. Interestingly, much is made about the failure of Vanguard and Von Braun "saving the day." But Sputnik was ALSO the Soviet backup plan! ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-hNOTGK5rAGQ.html
I'd have a great deal more respect for him had he spent at least a few years with Albert Speer in Spandau. He killed thousands of British people with his terror bombs, killed thousands more people building them. The Americans could have given him a lab in Spandau. "Build us a rocket, Wernher, and you'll get your dinner."
He was arrested by the SS at one point because they suspected he cared more about spaceflight with his rockets and developing weapons for the Reich. He was only eventually released because he was essential to the V-2 project... OL J R :)
The original German abbreviation was NSDAP. Nazi is the name given to them by the press which existed in the US at the time. And I say "press" instead of "media" because media was basically in print form back then, radio notwithstanding.
Weight and weightlessness .... essentially we feel "weight" on the Earth's surface because due to the mass of the Earth space is being warped or some shit and we're being accelerated. My best friend's a rocket scientist and he can explain how magnets work and not just that "there's a north pole and a south pole" pabulum but really how they work ... it involves warping of space or some kind of relativistic shit too ... frankly it makes my head hurt, I guess it's to be expected as I flunked 2nd semester calc twice and gave up after that.
Von Braun was not a "high ranking Nazi" responsible for any of the genocide in World War II. Conflating the soldier with the dictator simply legitimizes the evil and smears the innocent.
He was arrested by the SS at one point because they suspected he cared more about spaceflight with his rockets and developing weapons for the Reich. He was only eventually released because he was essential to the V-2 project... OL J R :)
LOL. He literally lays out the Mercury and Apollo programs, explains the concept of orbital velocity to a bunch of AF guys... and you say "early propaganda". Your comment makes me fear for the future of our species. You make me think we are too stupid to survive.
Not that many. Neither V1 nor V2 had guidance systems sufficient to target individual targets and were lucky to impact 20 miles from their targets. The V1 was actually more deadly than the V2 because the V1, impacting horizontally, spread its destruction over a much wider area than the vertically impacting V2 missile, which dug a hole then set off an explosion in it, limiting its damage.
@@RockinRobbins13 V-1's dove on the target... they had a "mile counter" which when it hit the preset target distance calculated and set into the guidance system before launch, it shut off the fuel supply to the pulsejet engine, and locked the controls in a spinning dive to give it directional stability (spin like a bullet) and drive straight down on the target. BUT as you said the lower impact speed meant the warhead exploded on the surface doing more damage. The V-2's came in supersonic, as the flew up to about 60 miles or so and then dove basically straight down by the time they were over the target at the end of their ballistic arc trajectory. They had fallen from such a high altitude and gained so much speed they impacted at supersonic velocities, so the warheads buried themselves into the ground pretty deep before impact, limiting damage somewhat. The guidance systems were "state of the art" at the time but extremely primitive as they were the first functional guidance systems of their type. They basically were relying on spies in the UK acting as "spotters" and reporting where the missiles impacted in order for the German units launching them to correct their programmed impact points they were putting into the control systems. The UK had done a smashing job ferreting out German spies in Britain and either putting them out of commission, but usually succeeding in turning them into "double agents" and having them feed false intelligence back to Germany in order to mislead them. The British basically had their German double-agents feeding back false information about the impact points, telling the Germans that the V-1's and V-2's were falling short of the city (when they were actually impacting within London) so that the German crews would set the missiles to fall further downrange, thinking that would put them directly into the city, but which caused them to end up overflying the city and impacting beyond it well outside the city. Later! OL J R :)
He was arrested by the SS at one point because they suspected he cared more about spaceflight with his rockets and developing weapons for the Reich. He was only eventually released because he was essential to the V-2 project... OL J R :)
A lot is made of von Braun's Nazi past. Willy Lay addressed part of it in "Rockets, Missiles and Outer Space". He said Himmler offered von Braun a major's commission in the SS. This was seen as a distraction by von Braun, but he feared Himmler's reaction if he declined. He polled his senior staff with the question '...what would happen to the rocket program if I accept the offer, and what if I declined?" The majority said "accept" He did. There is one picture of him in uniform, with Himmler striding in front of him. Wernher von Braun was ramrod straight, with a terrified look on his face. He addressed his work at Mittelwerk in a biography documentary. He told of being one of a group of senior staff forced to watch the execution of a randomly selected group of slaves. He said "A man with a gun stood in front, to the side, to make sure none of the witnesses looked away or closed his eyes." It was clear that the staff were as much slaves as the workers. It is easy to say " I'd never be part of that death machine." It''s different when one is engulfed in it. What would I do? I wish I could say.
If you search him there's plenty of chat here including his Farewell speech, it certainly makes one feel we know more about such individuals doesn't it.
Absolutely awesome!!! His audience first seemed somewhat doubtful of this possibility... You could tell by the expression on their faces... Further into the presentation, the men seemed intensely interested into the advantages of what space exploration could do... Especially concerning military reconaissance...
THIS WAS GREAT!!!!! LOOK AT ALL THE SMOKE, IT WAS HORRIBLE, I WAS BORN IN 1943, SMOKING WAS EVERYWHERE. IN MY 79 YEARS OF LIFE, THE 3 MOST USELESS THINGS I HAVE EVER SEEN STUPID HUMANS DO IS: SMOKING, DRINKING AND DRUGS.
Yep now people drink like fish and they're legalizing weed left and right. I've read that a lot of companies are abandoning the weed legal states and relocating their businesses- tired of having to pay good for nothing stoners who won't work or are too stoned to do the job right, just tear stuff up and screw stuff up as much as they get done right... not worth it to them to stay there. In 10-15 years we'll have a health care "crisis" from all the burned out stoners coughing up lungs and their brains too burned out to take care of themselves, and too riddled with other health problems to be anything but a public health burden, while the weed states are suffering from massive cost overruns in public health trying to take care of them and massive funding shortfalls from loss of businesses and jobs. Then the gubmint will try to go the other way again and outlaw it and of course the genie will be out of the bottle and they'll have riots demanding it stay legal. SO stupid! Two things I can't stand-- d@mn worthless drunks and scumbag dope smokers... OL J R : )
I’m amazed by his speech. Anyone with even a cursory understanding of German knows about the F/V/W pronunciation differences… but he doesn’t slip up. He speaks very deliberately and with precision. He even mostly has the R at the end of English words as is common in most dialects. Aside from the pronunciation, just the vocabulary involved to give such a presentation on a technical topic without any bumbling or fumbling… it would be difficult as a native speaker to not slur something a little or misspeak in some way. Really astonishing the level of intelligence on display here.
Operation Paperclip's poster boy. No one can never deny his genius. When I was a kid I bought into the white washing of his Nazi past, thanks to Walt Disney and US Government. I believe Von Braun was a pragmatic man and he did what he had to do to earn his freedom and citizenship. I believe that he was a hardcore Nazi and probably harbored some resentment to his American masters for helping the USSR defeat his Homeland.
Read the "Project Horizon" Air Force study from this approximate time period... USAF planning to build 12 man moon base and eventually put nuclear missiles on the Moon LOL:) It's online just got to use a search engine. Later! OL J R :)
Von Braun did some terrible things in his life but he also was most directly responsible for Apollo 10. That craft was the fastest object humans have ever traveled in to this day and it was 1969. 29.5k MPH.
Don't say that he's hypocritical Say rather that he's apolitical "Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? That's not my department!" says Wernher von Braun -Tom Lehrer, "Wernher von Braun"
The diagram at 8:45-9:15 showing the orbit with apogee and perigee is wrong. In an elliptical orbit, the earth would be at one of the focal points of the ellipse, so it would be off-center. The apogee and perigee are on opposite sides of the orbit, not 90 degrees apart.
@@TatevossianA They can be, but one would be at (or very near) the center of the earth. Strictly speaking, when one object orbits another, both are actually orbiting the CG of the system, but when one of those objects is vastly more massive than the other, the larger object barely moves, and the other object is on an elliptical orbit, with one focal point essentially at the location of the other object. Whether the other focal point is inside the larger object is just a question of how elliptical the orbit is, how large that orbit is, and how large the larger object is. When a comet comes into the inner solar system, that is just one part (the perihelion) of a long elliptical orbit, most of which (including the far point, or apehelion) is beyond Neptune. So the other focal point is waaaay outside the sun.
@@Mishn0 The majority of people watching this video are likely interested in space travel, and the point being discussed is a pretty basic aspect of orbital mechanics and "rocket science 101". The diagram is blatantly wrong, and would be confusing for anyone just learning the subject, so I thought it was worth pointing out. Now that I've explained my motivation for posting my comment, what was the motivation for your response?
@@jmmahony The film was't produced for people that have been exposed to space travel for 70 years. It was produced for those military officers who had never been exposed to this, because NO ONE had ever been exposed to this, because this hadn't existed before. I'm pointing this out because your comment is completely irrelevant to why this video was made. The reason you posted this is to enable you to show us all how frigging smart you are. Period. Here's another clue, we don't care.
I'm sure Stalin made an offer they couldn't resist. Don't forget communists are one mindedness --they are not burdened by public opinion. Look at communist China's ever growing power expansion even is space expiration and look at us --worried about genderless bathrooms, sex reassignment in the military, the monetary burden of illegal immigration, etc. --too many distractions.
They had Von Braun's equal genius in Sergei Korolev. In some ways Korolev was more genius than Von Braun. While the Soviets did round some some second-rate German V-2 people that were communists or socialists and didn't want to work for the Americans, and took them back to Moscow where they were cloistered in their own lab because Stalin was paranoid about "counter-revolutionary ideas" where they worked on the V-2 stuff the Soviets managed to scavenge from Germany and Poland after the war, building and flying a handful of V-2's and demonstrating the technology for the Soviets (including Korolev), when they tried to put forward ideas for improved V-2's and new rockets, they were rebuffed-- Korolev and Glushko and the other Soviet "chief designers" already had their own ideas and soon were flying their own Soviet home-built version of the V-2 (called the R-2) and looking far beyond it to more improvements they had in mind and soon put into practice. They were the first to figure out that if you separated the warhead from the missile after engine burnout it was a h3ll of a lot more accurate, so that's one of the first big improvements they made, and soon their R-5 missiles were flying and the R-7 Semyorka became their first ICBM, which also was used to orbit the Sputniks and other satellites, the first manned spacecraft, Vostock, and still is flying to this day in evolved form as the "Soyuz launcher", the US astronauts only way into space from shuttle retirement in 2011 until SpaceX Crew Dragon launches started a few years back. OL J R :)
I’m so happy to have found this video. It’s all theoretical at the time and seems like a pitch to the US Military Dragons Den for funding. The Chief German rocket scientist and SS officer who designed the V2 rocket that was used against the allied forces during WW2. He wasn’t tried as a war criminal but instead became director of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center and the chief architect of the Saturn V launch vehicle, the superbooster that would propel Americans to the Moon. If I’d been there my hand would’ve been up in the air to ask all sorts of questions??? He talks about achieving a 60 mile high orbit and its complexities. Then the whole returning to Earth safely and it’s problems. The building of a space station that would be a Military surveillance point and bombing platform. You’ve got to give him credit pitching this futuristic technology. What better way to get funding than the promise of national security and the best weapon to defend yourself.
Probly one of the things still to be worked out. They didn't know EVERYTHING in '55! Basically you just have to slow down enough to put the perigee of the orbit down into the deeper parts of the atmosphere, air drag will do the rest. Theoretically if you retroburned your engine long enough, you could drop back into the atmosphere without a heat shield-- but it would basically take almost as much fuel as it took to put you into orbit in the first place! Conservation of momentum and energy transfer and all that. Later! OL J R: )
He obviously knows what he is talking about; he has no notes. I don't know how he could be in the same room with all that cigarette smoke being blown in his face. This sounds like it was before NASA, before October 1958. It would have been handy to have a space station that would revolve and produce it's own gravity, but the cost would be exponential.
I just saw the diagram< quickly paused the video and went down to the comments sec. to see if some 1 had what's in my mind , and found your comment .😁 Yes, the diagram is faulty .
Probably missed an opportunity to advise that if we can put bombs in orbit, then other countries will also eventually do so. Therefore, maybe its not a good idea to do that...
