he found that the best propellant is liquid propellant. On March 16, 1926, he was able to fly
the first successful rocket made by him, using oxygen and gasoline as the propellant. It only
flew for two and a half seconds, 12.5 meters high. But since this is the beginning of everything,
Robert H. Goddard was honored by the title “Father of Modern Rocketry”. Achieving high
altitudes in his later experiments, he developed a gyroscope system for flight control and a
parachute recovery system to take rocket back to Earth safely. They were giant leaps in the
history of rockets.
Hermann
Oberth
from
Romania, (later lived in
Germany 1894-1989) is
also another pioneer in the
history of rockets. He did a lot
of research about multi-stage
rockets, escaping the earth
gravitational pull etc. Since he
was in Germany, his findings
inspired Nazis in building the
V-2 Rocket missile with 12 250kg mass and 3500mph speed, which was used to attack Britain,
killing 3000 people in World War II. Rocket engineer and designer Wernher von Braun, who
was captured and taken to America later, assisted him on this. He became the mastermind
for the American Space program later. He developed the rockets that launched the USA’s first
space satellite Explorer I. His group was funded by NASA, where he served as director of the
newly formed Marshall Space Flight Center. He was also the chief architect of the Saturn V
super heavy-lift launch vehicle that propelled the Apollo spacecraft to the Moon. Von Braun
is the father of rocket technology and space science in the United States.
After the Second World War, both the USA and the Soviet
Union started a Cold War of power. With that, the space
industry began to expand rapidly. The United States began
a program with high-altitude atmospheric sounding rockets,
which was one of Goddard's early ideas. Soviet Union
developed the R-7 family of rockets. A variety of medium and
long-range missiles was developed such as Redstone (1952 -
propellants ethyl alcohol, liquid oxygen, hydrogen peroxide),
Atlas Rockets (propellants RP-1 and Liquid Oxygen) and
Titan Rockets, which were later used even in manned space
missions such as Apollo and Vostok.
The two nations had a race to win the space for 8 years, and finally, the Soviet Union won
it by launching Sputnik 1, the first man-made satellite, using a rocket developed from R-7
technology with 4 boosters and RD 108 Engine which used Liquid Oxygen (Commonly called
LOX) and Kerosene as the fuel.
Imagination became Reality. Then the US launched their first satellite on 31st January
1958, Explorer I and in October that year, the pioneer in Space program of Earth, National
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University of Peradeniya GAUGE Magazine