Word: oberth
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Other possible recipients of this year's physics prize are James Van Allen of Iowa State University, and Hermann Oberth, of Germany. Van Allen developed the cosmic ray detection apparatus used in Explorer I, the first American artificial satellite, while Oberth's work is in the field of rocketry...
...race for prestige and achievement in space, these complicated virtues have their drawbacks, however temporary. Said German Scientist Hermann Oberth, who had worked on the U.S. missile program: "The Russian rockets remind me of simple alarm clocks-you can throw them on the wall and they'll keep on ticking. American missiles are like expensive ladies' wrist watches that look nice but tend to stop frequently." An old missile hand at Cape Canaveral turned to a football figure. The Russians, said he, are now leading in moon shots by 7 to 6-they have converted after the touchdown...
Blood on the Walls. Reading an astronomy pamphlet in the mid-1920s Von Braun saw a drawing of a rocket streaking through space to the moon. It illustrated an article about Pioneer Rocket Theorist Hermann Oberth, now 63 and a consultant to Von Braun's Huntsville team, which venerates him as "The Old Gentleman." Von Braun sent away for a copy of Oberth's classic book, The Rocket to the Interplanetary Spaces, was shocked to discover that it contained mostly mathematical equations. Until then, Von Braun had disliked math, and indeed had flunked it in school. "But," says...
Rocketeer Oberth's work had inspired many another young German rocket bug, most of them flirting dangerously with destruction as they pursued their untried hobby. Von Braun joined a small group firing rockets from an abandoned ammunition dump in suburban Berlin. When he left for a term at Zurich's Institute of Technology, he continued his experiments, built a contraption that spun mice in simulation of rocket takeoffs. Afterward, his roommate, an American medical student, dissected the mice, announced to Von Braun that the high acceleration caused cerebral hemorrhages. Their landlady had another kind of announcement: any more...
Other space ideas of Oberth...