This course provides a view of the history of spaceflight, from early writings telling of human's fascination of space through the early Russian and American space stations. Developed as an interesting and entertaining slice of space history that is accessible to anyone with an interest in human spaceflight
Unit 3 - Movie
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Del curso dictado por University of Houston System
A Brief History of Human Spaceflight
227 calificaciones
De la lección
Unit 3 - Early Rocketry
Learn about how rockets were developed from the ancient Chinese through today's powerful rockets
Conoce a los instructores
Dr. Chuck LayneProfessor and Department Chair
Health and Human Performance
[MUSIC]
Humans have long been fascinated with the power of the rocket.
Early in their history, rockets were used as weapons of war,
from the Chinese fire arrows to the Indian Mysore rockets,
to their successor, the British Congreve rockets.
Later, Russian, German, and American scientists and engineers,
with the support of their governments, began developing modern rockets.
At first, as weapons and later, for peaceful missions,
such as a satellite launches, trips to the moon and sending humans to space stations.
The science of rocketry will continue to expand with additional
nations developing their own space programs and
private industry fueling innovative approaches to rocketry.
[MUSIC]
The only British unit at the Battle of the Nations was a detachment of
Royal Horse Artillery armed with Congreve rockets.
Captain Alexander Mercer described the use of Congreve rockets on June 17,
1815 during the retreat from Quatre Bras as follows.
Quote, the rocketeers had placed a little iron triangle in the road with a rocket
lying on it.
The order to fire is given, port fire replied.
The fidgety missile begins to sputter out spark and wriggle its tail for
a second or two, and then darts forth, straight up the.
A gun stands right in its way, between the wheels of which the shell and
the head of the rocket bursts.
The gunners fall right and left, and rocketeers keep shooting off rockets,
none of which ever follow the course of the first.
Most of them on arriving about the middle of the ascent, took a vertical direction.
Whilst some actually turned back upon ourselves, and
one of these following me like a squib until it's shell exploded, actually put
me in more danger than all the fire of the enemy throughout the day, unquote.
[MUSIC]
Other times, the Congreve rockets were more successful,
used by British ships to pound Fort McHenry in the War of 1812.
They inspired Francis Scott Key to write The Rocket's Red Glare,
words in his poem that later became the Star Spangled Banner.
[MUSIC]
>> The development of modern rocketry was the result of scientists in the late
19th and early 20th century who didn't let the bounds of earth keep them
from pursuing their flights of fancy.
They were often ridiculed for their revolutionary ideas
that humans could build a rocket that could carry people to the moon.
American inventor, Robert Goddard, was ridiculed by the New York Times for
his suggestion in a 1920s Smithsonian article
that rockets could be used to send payloads to the moon.
The day after Apollo 11 began its historic journey to the moon in 1969,
the New York Times issued a retraction
to the 1920 editorial that criticized Goddard's suggestions and
ended the piece by stating they regretted the earlier error.
The pioneering work of the individuals we will learn about next
was instrumental in the development of today's rockets.
>> We'll now examine some of the prominent scientists and
engineers who played significant roles in the development of modern rocketry
>> The first person to receive credit for
proposing a solid fuel rocket was Nikoli Kilbalchich, who sketched his design for
a manned rocket while in prison within days of being executed for
his role in the assassination of Emperor Alexander II of Russia.
His proposal was buried in the archives until August 1917,
when revolution ended the rule of the Romanov Dynasty.
[MUSIC]
>> Assassins would relentlessly stalk the court of Imperial Russia.
Alexander II, Czar of all the Russia's in the 19th century
was a reformer as Czars went but one hungry man with a bomb
can kill a reformer as easily as he can kill a cruel oppressor.
In 1881, an assassin's well-aimed bomb exploded at Alexander's feet,
mutilating him horribly.
The royal family that gathered around his deathbed
was previewing its own grim finish.
>> The irony of it was that of all of those members of the family gathered
around a dying czar in his bedroom, nine of them would be assassinated too.
>> Another Russian scientist,
Konstantin Tsiolkovsky wrote extensively about the concept of jet propulsion.
In 1903, he published a manuscript titled
Exploration of the World's Space with Reaction Machines.
The Tsiolkovsky formula described the mathematical relation
between the changing mass of a rocket as it burns fuel,
the velocity of exhaust gases and the rocket's final speed.
This is considered one of the foundations of the science of astronomics.
[MUSIC]
>> It was Russian physicist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky who drew up the first concrete
plans for a space flight.
As early as the turn of the century, he proved that only liquid fuel could give
rockets the thrust necessary for overcoming the Earth's gravitational pull.
>> Robert Goddard was an American scientist and
inventor who launched history's first liquid-fueled rocket in 1926.
Primarily working independent of government support,
Goddard built a series of rockets over the next 20 years,
progressively developing increasingly sophisticated devices.
He's credited with theorizing that rockets could function in the vacuum of space,
thereby conceptually opening the way for
travel to distant objects in the solar system.
>> [MUSIC]
>> Robert Goddard, the American rocket pioneer, yanking inventor,
dreamer; they called him the Moon Man and laughed but on his own,
he went ahead designing, inventing, and testing.
His first proving grounds were on his Aunt Effie's farm in Auburn, Massachusetts.
[MUSIC]
The neighbors complained.
[MUSIC]
>> With a grant from Daniel Guggenheim,
he moved to New Mexico with his wife Esther, who was also his camera woman.
Goddard had invented and
launched the world's first liquid propellant rocket in 1926.
And in the end, he accumulated more than 200 patents for
everything from multi-stage rockets to fuel pumps and clustered engines.
[MUSIC]
By the year 1930, his rockets achieved a speed of 500 miles per hour and
an altitude of 2000 feet.
[MUSIC]
This was the year in which the three Apollo astronauts were born.
[MUSIC]
Goddard had a vision of the age of space.
But the world was too slow to make it happen before his death.
[MUSIC]
Thank you, Robert Goddard for your inventiveness and perseverance.
[MUSIC]
>> As a young man, Hermann Oberth read Jules Verne's from the Earth to the Moon
and became fascinated with the idea of space travel.
The German scientist is best known for his 1923 publication
The rocket into planetary space, which was based upon his dissertation work but
was roundly rejected by his academic committee.
However, he persisted and eventually launched his first rocket in 1931.
He's credited with realizing that multi stage rockets could
increase the speed of the last stage of the rocket.
He theorized quote if there is a small rocket on top of a big one and
if the big one is jettisoned the small one is ignited then their speeds are added.
This has been a cornerstone of rocketry ever since.
One of his young assistants was Wernher von Braun
with whom he developed a lifelong relationship.
Tsiolkovsky, Goddard and Obrick all developed and explored their ideas of
rocketry during approximately the same period and reached similar conclusions.
However, there's no evidence that any of the three is aware
of the work of the others.
So for this reason, all share the title of the Father of Rocketry.
[MUSIC]
Although developed for the purpose of bombing cities, the German V1 and
V2 rockets represent significant technological advances in rocketry.
Although the V1 never left the atmosphere, and therefore
technically is not considered a rocket, it could fly relatively long distances,
an average altitude of 3,500 feet, and average speed of 350 miles per hour.
The V1s used a pulse engine, powered by 150 gallons of gasoline.
That made the characteristic sound that gave them the names buzz bombs or
doodlebugs by the Londoners who were the primary target of the V1s.
Later versions had radio transmitters
which provided information about the landing sites of the bombs.
>> Powered by an august pulse jet engine, producing just 740 pounds of thrust.
The newly christened V1 could carry a warhead of 1870 pounds on
a fuel load that would give it half an hours flight time
at about 400 miles an hour at an altitude of up to 4,000 feet.
After trials at Peenemünde on the Baltic, the V1 was released for service in 1943.
The missile was launched from a long ascending ramp using a device
powered by the same fuels used by the ME 163.
Scheduled to begin operations in December, 1943,
it was only on the 13th of June, 1944 and a week after the landings in Normandy,
that the first V1 launched from the began the German rocket bombardment of
London what was to last until the 5th of September.
[MUSIC]
>> The V2 was the first true rocket in that it left the atmosphere,
traveled to an altitude up to 60 miles and
could hit city sized targets 190 miles away from the launch site.
It took only 30 seconds for the V2s to go from launch to the speed of sound.
In fact, they flew five times the speed of sound.
Its engine was 17 times more powerful than any engine developed up to that time.
The V2 represented four major technological advances that were to be
important to the development of the rockets used to launch humans into space.
These were a powerful engine, an aerodynamic shape,
a relatively functional guidance system, and a radio transmission system.
Wernher von Braun was instrumental in the development of the V2 rocket.
Although ultimately having no impact on the final result of World War II these
weapons were responsible for thousands of deaths in and around London, and
the port cities of Western Europe after D-Day.
[MUSIC]
>> You are watching captured German films of the top secret Nazi research
center at Peenemünde, a base on an island in the Baltic Sea.
It was here that German Scientists developed the first rocket
to travel faster than the speed of sound.
When it was unleashed on London, it gave no warning of its approach.
You heard the explosion before you heard the sound of the missile.
The results were devastating.
[MUSIC]
Leading the German research was Werner von Braun,
a scientist whose passion about space exploration was exploited by the Nazis.
Years later, Von Braun would work for NASA on the Apollo missions.
But now, his focus was on London.
The German project had its share of successes and failures.
As can be witnessed here the 2000 pound warhead could cause
a great deal of damage.
At first, London felt its wrath, but now individual rockets
had names such as Washington DC, Philadelphia, and New York.
Those were the ultimate targets.
[MUSIC]
It was only a matter of time before the range of the rockets would be extended
from across the English Channel to across the Atlantic.
But Allied bombing combined with the loss of launching sites in Western Europe
following the D-Day invasion doomed Germany's chance to maximize the use
of these weapons of terror.
[MUSIC]
Hitler believed he could salvage the war with these rockets,
more than ten thousand were fired at the Allies.
They did cause initial panic to Londoners when first introduced but
they had little military impact on the course of the war.
For the Nazi's, it was too little, too late.
[MUSIC]
>> Wernher von Braun is considered a giant in the world of human space flight.
Von Braun worked for the Germans on the development of the V-2 rocket bomb and
was captured by the Americans in May of 1945.
His value to the Americans was quickly realized
as he was sent to America to work on ballistic missiles.
After the launch of the Russian Sputnik satellite, Von Braun had the opportunity
to return to his first love, trying to launch humans into space.
In 1960, von Braun became the first director
of the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama and
developed the legendary Saturn Rockets that launched humans to the moon.
He quit NASA in 1972 in protest of President Richard Nixon's decision
to cancel the Apollo program, thereby discontinuing flights to the moon.
[MUSIC]
>> Moments of space travel, Dr. Wernher von Braun who is at present the chief of
the guided missile division of the Army's rocket center at Redstone Arsenal.
He was also overall director of the development of the original V-2 rocket.
>> The training methods for future space flight, and the special equipment
needed for survival are much like those of present high altitude flying.
The experiments we are making today are helping us to solve the more complex
problems to come.
Take the present day pressurized flying suit, for example.
It has been designed for use at extremely high altitudes and
is a forerunner of the suits we will wear when we make our trip to the moon.
To give you an idea of how engineers and medical men are working hand in hand,
here are a few examples of the results that's being conducted at this time.
This pressure suit is being worn in a test chamber
where the air pressure can be dropped suddenly.
>> [SOUND] >> Notice that the water boils at this
low pressure, even though it is only at normal body temperature,
blood would be the same without the protection of the suit.
In other tests without the suit, where the drop in air pressure is less severe, we
see that the body still reacts violently to a sudden decrease in pressure.
Lieutenant Colonel John P.
Stapp of the United States Air Force has subjected himself to the tremendous forces
of a rocket sled that reaches the speed of over 632 miles per hour.
The sled stopped so
quickly the thermostat's body becomes 35 times heavier than normal.
From these tests, we have learned that man can take much greater acceleration
forces than crew members of a rocket ship will undergo on a take-off.
Today's aircraft are so fast and so complicated that it has already
become routine to train the crews on the ground without risking lives or equipment.
This is done with a device called a flight simulator.
Here the crews experience all the sensations of an extended flight.
The crews of future rocket ships will train much the same way.
We will use a simulator on a centrifuge and employ an astrosphere to
train the celestial navigators for our coming space flights.
Now here's a model, my design for a four stage orbital rocket ship.
Compared to the unmanned instrument rocket, it is quite large but
the overall size and
weight of the rocket is mainly determined by the 11 tons weight of this top section.
This weight dictates the amount of fuel and the numbers of motors
needed to produce enough power to equalize the gravitational pull of the Earth.
The payload in the top section will consist of ten
crew members plus equipment.
Notice the wings, small rocket motor, and landing gears.
This is the section that must ultimately return the men to the Earth safely.
To produce the energy needed to hurl this stage into the orbit,
we need these three additional rocket powered sections.
Here we have a cutaway drawing of our rocket showing
the location of the fuel and the motors of each section.
The first stage carries 1,060 tons of fuel and
its 29 motors will lift the entire weight of the ship vertically off the ground.
The second stage has eight motors and carries 155 tons of fuel.
It will be dropped when it's speed has reached 14,300 miles per hour.
The next is our third stage, with only one rocket motor and 13 tons of fuel.
The third stage gives the passenger section the final kick
to obtain the orbit.
It will not be separated from the passenger section until
just before the return flight.
The third stage would be left in space and
a very small motor in the winged fourth stage will return the ship
to the atmosphere so it can glide back to the base.
If we were to start today on an organized and well supported space program, I
believe a practical passenger rocket could be built and tested within ten years.
Of course, it would be foolish to rush headlong into building a four-stage
rocket, man it with a crew and attempt to fire it into an orbit without first
following a step by step research and development program.
[MUSIC]
>> Sergei Korolev is widely regarded as the founder of the Soviet Space Program.
After receiving a technical and engineering education, Korolev worked at
the Jet Propulsion Research Institute in Moscow developing liquid fuel rockets.
In 1938, Korolev was imprisoned, as part of Stalin's purges,
and remained a prisoner until 1944.
After World War II, he led the development of the world's first ballistic missile,
which in various forms has served as the Russian human launch vehicle ever since.
Korolev died in 1966 at the age of 59,
having led the development of the Russian Space Program,
including the launch of the first human in space, Yuri Gagarin.
[MUSIC]
[SOUND]
>> [APPLAUSE]
>> The Russians were
the pioneers of space.
They successfully challenged the United States in a dramatic race in to
the cosmos.
This is an account of the Russian space achievement.
[MUSIC]
[SOUND] The first space rocket was launched in 1957 but
the theoretical basis for what the Russians would
call cosmonautics was formulated a half century
earlier in Kaluga, a small town near Moscow.
Konstantin Tsiolkovsky a school teacher,
conducted primary search on space flight mechanics.
[MUSIC]
In 1903, he theorized that a liquid fuel rocket could carry man into space.
By 1914, he published the definitive text that would
become the Bible of Russia's aeronautics.
[MUSIC]
During the first two decades of the 20th century Tsiolkovsky's works drew little
attention.
The review is nothing more than a subject for science fiction films.
[MUSIC]
Russia did not even have a liquid propellant rocket motor.
The first two were built in 1930.
One by Valentin Glushko, at the Gaso Dynamics Laboratory in Leningrad.
The other by Fredric Sander and
his team at The Aircraft Engine Construction Institute in Moscow.
In 1931, Sergei Korolev an energetic 24 year old engineer joined Sanders team.
[MUSIC]
It was instrumental in securing financial support from the military and
official registration.
A large cellar in a Moscow apartment house was to become a new laboratory.
[MUSIC]
After death in 1933, Korolev succeeded.
[MUSIC]
He supervised the construction of Russia's first liquid fuel rocket, the GIRD09.
Launched in August 1933, fueled by a mixture of liquid oxygen and
thickened gasoline, it reached an altitude of 120 feet.
[MUSIC]
New models were immediately produced.
[MUSIC]
the Red Army's Chief Procurement Officer and
a passionate advocate of rocketry, wanted a unified rocket center.
In 1933, the Gaso Dynamics Laboratory from Leningrad and
Korolev Moscow racketeers were merged into the jet research and
development institute with Korolev as a department head.
[MUSIC]
They developed dozens of projects for ballistics and winged missiles but
most were unrealized.
[MUSIC]
In prison during Starling's purges Korolev was assigned to design a rocket booster
for.
[MUSIC]
Ironically, it was the German V2 Rocket strikes of London that saved Korolev.
[SOUND] The V2s designed by Hitler's chief rocketeer,
Wernher von Braun as imperfect and unreliable as they were
demonstrated to the world the potential of the missile as a weapon.
[SOUND] Stalin realized he needed to intensify his rocket program.
[SOUND] In 1945, the Americans and
the Russians started searching for Germany's missile secrets.
An overture to the fierce competition that would escalate for the next 40 years.
[CROSSTALK] Almost 400 missile
experts surrendered to the US troops.
[CROSSTALK] Then Avan Brown, fleeing from the advancing red army, broke his
arm in a car accident before surrendering to the US 7th army in Bavaria.
[CROSSTALK] The Americans captured hundreds of V2s along with production and
testing equipment.
[SOUND] The Russian search team led by the recently
released Korolev had a much more difficult task.
Rocket facilities and
the Soviet occupations zone were thoroughly destroyed.
[MUSIC]
But the team managed to locate detailed descriptions of the V2 and assembled
a dozen missiles from parts discovered at the Northhouse missile plant.
[MUSIC]
The V2s were shipped home in a sealed train.
[MUSIC]
General Dimitri the people's commissar for
armament, viewed rocketry as a cornerstone of the Soviet military might.
>> [INAUDIBLE] >> He ordered Korolev return and
appointed him director of the newly formed Liquid Fuel Rocket Center.
[MUSIC]
Korolev and his engineers were assigned the task of
testing the captured V2 and replicating it.
[MUSIC]
In 1946,
a test range was hastily constructed in Copastinya on the southern border.
[MUSIC]
tents became home for the staff.
[MUSIC]
Railway carriages housed the labs and ground control facilities.
[MUSIC]
The test to form Braun's V2s began there in 1947.
[MUSIC]
Within a year a replica was created.
This missile designated the R1 was first successfully launched
in October 1948 and flew 180 miles.
[MUSIC]
The rocketeers' ultimate goal was to create
an intercontinental ballistic missile.
Von Braun's scientists attached to the US Army, had similar objectives.
[MUSIC]
Korlioff's ambition was to capture and win.
13 R1 launchers were made [INAUDIBLE].
[MUSIC]
Hard won.
[MUSIC]
By the early fifties, earlier models evolved into the powerful R5,
capable of delivering nuclear warheads up to 750 miles.
[NOISE] Apart from their [INAUDIBLE] missiles became research tools.
[NOISE] Americans began biological research for space flight.
[NOISE] The Russians followed.
Since 1951, missiles equipped with pressurized capsules carried dogs 60
miles into the upper atmosphere.
[NOISE] The animals endured high g forces at take off and
six minutes of weightlessness.
The dog's heartbeat, respiration, and
blood pressure were monitored during the 20 minute flights.
[SOUND] The capsule separated from the rocket,
fell to an altitude of four miles, then parachuted down.
[SOUND] In the 50s, dozens of dogs,
rabbits, rats, and mice performed
suborbital flights up to 218
miles above above sea level >> The development
of the modern rocket was rapid in historical terms.
From the time of the primitive launches of Goddard's and Elberth's rockets
in the late 1920s and early 1930s, It took just 40 years for
the massive Saturn 5 rockets to propel astronauts to the moon.
The pioneers of the early and
mid 20th century were clearly
Titans of science and engineering.
[MUSIC]
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