Secret Projects.Military Space Technology

196 Pages·2008·108.982 MB·English

by  Bill Rose

SECRET PROJECTS
MILITARY SPACE
TECHNOLOGY
BILL ROSE

SECRET PROJECTS
MILITARY SPACE
TECHNOLOGY

SECRET PROJECTS
MILITARY SPACE
TECHNOLOGY
BILL ROSE
MIDLAND
An imprint of
Ian Allan Publishing
Secret Projects - Military Space Technology
© Bill Rose 2008
ISBN 978 1 85780 296 2
First published in 2008 by Midland Publishing
an imprint of Ian Allan Publishing Ltd,
Riverdene Business Park, Molesey Road,
Hersham, Surrey KT12 4RG
Worldwide distribution (except North America):
Midland Counties Publications
4 Watling Drive, Hinckley, LE10 3EY, England
Tel: [phone] Fax: [phone]
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All rights reserved. No part of this publication
may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,
transmitted in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical or photocopied, recorded
or otherwise, without the written permission of
the copyright owners.
Design and concept
© 2008 Midland Publishing and
Stephen Thompson Associates
Layout by Russell Strong.
Edited by Tony Buttler
Printed by Ian Allan Printing Ltd
Riverdene Business Park, Molesey Road
Hersham, Surrey, KT12 4RG, England.
Visit the Ian Allan Publishing website at: Photograph on half-title page:
www.ianallanpublishing.com The successful launch of a captured German V-2
rocket during Operation Backfire in 1945. The
V-2 ballistic missile revolutionised warfare and
the technology eventually made manned missions
beyond the Earth's atmosphere possible. Bill Rose
Photograph on title page:
Conceptual artwork showing one of the USAFs
Orion spacecraft in orbit above the Moon. Huge
nuclear powered military space vehicles are
unlikely to become a reality in the foreseeable
future. Bill Rose
Contents
Introduction 6
Chapter One German Wartime Ambitions 14
Chapter Two British Space Ambitions 41
Chapter Three US Projects 63
Chapter Four Aurora, Myth or Reality? 128
Chapter Five Soviet Military Space Programmes 143
Chapter Six Nuclear Propulsion 169
Chapter Seven Destination Moon 180
Glossary 190
Index 192
5 Secret Projects: Military Space Technology
Introduction
'Space superiority is not our birthright, so become evident once the US establishes a estimated that the project would cost roughly
we 've got to work to make it our destiny.' permanent base on the Moon. the same as NASA's Moonshot (in adjusted
The way we regard space flight has evolved dollars of course). However, when he
General Lance W Lord, Commander, considerably since it first caught the public's attempted to calculate the effects of using the
US Air Force Space Command, imagination. The outlandish idea of venturing 900ft (274m) long cannon, Verne made a few
Peterson Air Force Base, Colorado, USA. 2005 beyond the Earth started to generate serious mistakes with the maths and seemed totally
interest during the latter part of the Victorian unaware that the massive acceleration would
Since World War Two almost every important era. This was a consequence of the publica- have instantly killed the crew members.
space programme or proposed project has tion of the sensational 1865 novel From the Although many Victorian readers regarded
involved some degree of secrecy, and this Earth to the Moon penned by Jules Verne Verne's novel as total fantasy, it set the scene
applies not just for military operations but (1828-1905). The popular French author was for further stories.
also to aspects of seemingly open, large-scale the first person to describe a trip to the Moon Influenced by Verne's novel, the British sci-
civil undertakings like NASA's manned Moon in semi-scientific terms and some aspects of ence fiction author H G Wells (1866-1946)
programme. In many cases hugely expensive this vision would prove amazingly prophetic. wrote The First Men in the Moon, which was
civil operations have carried unpublicised In Verne's story, a manned capsule was published in 1901. This story depicted a
risks, drawn on a certain amount of military launched towards the Moon using a gigantic spaceship covered with an exotic gravity
expertise, or generated new technologies cannon located at Tampa, Florida, which is shielding material called Cavorite, which was
with unforeseen potential to threaten relatively close to Cape Canaveral where piloted to the Moon by the eccentric scientist
national security. Sadly, most high profile NASA's Moon missions began a century later. Dr Cavor and his impoverished associate
space missions have tended to be flag waving He described gravity and weightlessness, Mr Bedford.
exercises, with scientific achievement taking while also suggesting the use of retro-rocket Although much of the technology
second place, although there are signs of a braking and an ocean splashdown. The described by Verne and Wells was impossi-
shift towards the greater commercial three-man spacecraft was similar in size to ble, serious research into space flight was
exploitation of space, which is likely to NASA's Apollo command module and Verne already being undertaken by a brilliant Russ-
ian visionary called Konstantin Edvardovich
Tsiolkovsky (1857-1935). A provincial maths
teacher who suffered from a degree of deaf-
ness caused by a childhood illness, Tsi-
olkovsky developed a deep and enduring
interest in science and engineering. In 1903
he completed a paper entitled Exploring
Space With Reactive Devices, which explained
how rocket propulsion would work in a total
vacuum and outlined ideas for liquid fuel
rocket propulsion. Tsiolkovsky established
most of the basic scientific rules for practical
space flight and went on to produce detailed
descriptions of space suits, orbital platforms
and multi-stage rockets.
As our scientific knowledge expanded,
ideas about leaving the Earth's atmosphere
using a purpose built machine began to take
shape and it seemed that manned space
flight might eventually become possible. In
America during the early 1920s, rocket pio-
neer Robert Hutchings Goddard (1882-1945)
Author Jules Verne, who became the first person undertook a series of somewhat crude, but
to describe a Moon flight in semi-scientific terms. nevertheless groundbreaking rocket experi-
ments. These tests proved the viability of liq-
An original drawing based on Verne's proposal
uid propellants and his influence reached
for a space capsule designed to reach the Moon.
Both Bill Rose designers in Germany who began to scale up
6 Secret Projects: Military Space Technology
the research and seriously consider its future maths teacher Hermann Oberth (1894-1989) Above left: British sci-fi author H G Wells, who did
applications. as a consultant. Oberth had written a book much to promote the idea of spaceflight during the
late Victorian era. Bill Rose
Pulp science fiction had already embraced on space travel called Die Rakete zu den
the spaceship and during the late 1920s the Planetenreumen (The Rocket into Interplan- Above centre: Konstantin Tsiolkovsky established
German film industry turned its attention to etary Space) which was published in 1922. most of the scientific principles of spaceflight
making a serious movie about a flight to the Lang also recruited the science writer Willy before the 19th Century had ended. Bill Rose
Moon. To achieve a high level of credibility, its Ley (1906-1969) as his second technical
Above right: The highly influential Romanian space
director Fritz Lang hired the Romanian born consultant and the finished movie, called pioneer Hermann Oberth. Bill Rose
Above: Mission control headquarters for Robert Goddard's rocket experiments Above: American rocket pioneer Dr Robert Goddard stands beside a small
during 1926. NASA liquid fuel rocket on 16th March 1926. NASA
7 Secret Projects: Military Space Technology
Far left: An early design for a space station
proposed by Hermann Noordung in 1928. Bill Rose
Left: After reading Hermann Oberth's book on
space travel in the early 1920s, film director Fritz
Lang set out to make a high quality motion picture
of the first Moon mission. His influential film Frau
im Mond set the standard until Destination Moon
was released in 1950. Bill Rose
Below: In 1937 work began at the Bavaria Studios
on a film with the provisional title Zwischenfall im
Weltraum (Incident in Space). At the same time
another sci-fi movie was in production at Ufa
Studios (Babelsberg) called Weltraumschiff 18
(Spaceship 18). Both films were cancelled in 1939,
but material from each production was cobbled
together to form a new twenty-minute long film
called Weltraumschiff 1 Startet (Spaceship 1
Launches), under the credited direction of Anton
Kutter. Sometimes described as Nazi science
fiction and often confused with Frau im Mond,
the film portrays a flight around the Moon in the
mid-1960s using a huge spaceship built by the
Zeppelin Works at Friedrichshafen. Bill Rose
Bottom: Without Wernher von Braun and his V-2
rocket, the advent of space exploration would have
been delayed by many decades. Only now would
we be considering the first Moon mission, which is
portrayed in this illustration. Bill Rose
Frau im Mond (Woman in the Moon), was
completed in 1929. Although it was not a
massive hit (due to the fact that this was one
of the last silent films to be made during a
period of swift transition to sound) it still set
the standard for cinematic science fiction
productions until 1950.
By the 1930s the first serious scientific study
of a Moon mission was being undertaken by
a group within the British Interplanetary Soci-
ety (BIS), who applied scientific and engi-
neering principles to the design of a lunar
rocket and landing vehicle. They came up
8