Word: oberth
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Dates: during 1929-1929
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...greater than the sum (10,000 francs, or about $390) is the honor attached to the annual R. E. P.-Hirsch prize of the French Astronomical Society. Far greater than the practical effect was the imaginative content of the work for which a young German named Oberth, experimenting in Rumania, last week received this year's Hirsch award...
Getting to the moon was the object of Herr Oberth's researches. The Society considered that he had actually made progress toward ''practical interstellar navigation." The problem begins, and so far has ended, with the forces by which Earth clutches that which is its own. To escape the pull of gravity, an earthborn body would have to take off at terrific speed. Outside the earthly atmosphere, interstellar gases are so rare that they would afford no traction for an airplane's propellor, no buoyance for wings. Most scientists with lunar leanings have therefore pondered shooting themselves...
After praising Herr Oberth and giving him the prize, the French Astronomical Society gravely warned that trips to the moon are still wholly impractical...