On October 29 , 1933 , the London Sunday Referee print a report from Rugen , an island in the Baltic Sea , just off the sea-coast of Germany . Someone call Otto Fischer had flown inside a 24 - foot steel rocket , to an altitude of six miles . Were the Germans really testing out a roquette that could conduct people , virtually three X before Yuri Gagarin ?
account said that Otto was the brother of the rocket ’s designer , Bruno Fischer . The escape had been made in total privateness because of a fateful attack at a launching the previous year , combine with the fact that the flying had been made under the auspices of the Reichswehr , the German War Ministry . The rocket engine , the Referee reported , had been constructed in the town of Barmbeck , near Hamburg , and transported to Rügen .
“ On Sunday morning , at 6 o’clock , ” the paper reported , “ Otto Fischer shook paw with his brother and the small grouping of Reichswehr officials present to witness the experiment , and crawled into the rocket through the small steel threshold .
“ Bruno Fischer and the three officials then put out to a small hollow in the ground about two hundred yards away and Fischer closed the electrical switch that sent the rocket on its journeying . There was a blinding news bulletin and a deafen explosion , and the slim zep - shaped body was gone from the steel framework in which it had rested .
“ A few mo later it came into sight again , floating olfactory organ upwards from a large chute that had mechanically been released when it had begin to derive . As it drift nearer , the brand louver on the outside of the body could be attend moving as its pilot film manipulated the rocket so that it would land on the island . A few seconds later it come to perch on the Baroness Dudevant a few chiliad away , and Fischer crawled through the door of the rocket Edward D. White and shake , but smiling triumphantly . The journeying through space had last 10 minutes and 26 seconds . ”
“ It was a tremendous maven , ” Fischer reported . “ When the rocket leave the ground I was conscious of a deafen roar and an intolerable weighting seemed to be crushing me against the flooring of the rocket . Then I lost cognizance for a moment , due to the tremendous acceleration which drain the line from my foreland . When I came to my senses and front at the altimeter before my aspect it flick at 32,000 feet and then began to discharge quickly . I had discharge my ascent and was descending . . . ”
This all sounds pretty plausible , peculiarly render all the matter - of - fact details aggregate with the fact that the Germans were in fact heatedly quest for rocket propulsion at the time . add to this was the fact that Bruno Fischer really existed and was busily at body of work design rockets . And in fact , the report caused a considerable fuss at the time it appeared . The American Rocket Society , the Cleveland Rocket Society , the Austrian Rocket Society , the British Interplanetary Society , GIRD in the Soviet Union were all besieged for information about the amazing rocket salad flight .
But there was one expert who get laid what was what about German rocketry and that was Willy Ley . According to Ley , the story had have sophisticate beyond recognition . In fact , there was indeed a grain of truth behind the story … although , as is often the suit , the truth was even stranger .
Rudolf Nebel , trailblazer rocket investigator and chief locomotive engineer of the Verein fur Raumschiffahrt ( the German Rocket Society ) had received a loan of DM15,000 ( $ 4,000 ) from the Bank of Magdeburg to work up a man - convey rocket . The “ Magdeburg Project ” had originally been offered to the VfR — who gladly turned the project over in its integrality to Nebel . The VfR already had a heavy enough time assert its credibleness — and when it learned what the coin bank ’s motives were , it wanted no part in such a crazy scheme .
The intent of the rocket escape , they ’d discover , was to prove : that we are not living on the away surface of the earth , but rather on the inner surface of a empty sphere ! This was the Hohlweltlehre , or Hollow Earth Doctrine , of Peter Bender that flourish in the anticultural Nazi effort ( just as did the equally harebrained Welteislehre , or World Ice Theory , of Hörbiger , that had such a profound influence upon garden rocket automobile inventor Max Valier and German sci fi author Otto Willi Gail ) .
Franz Mengering , an applied scientist working for the city of Magdeburg , had come to upon the mind that the empty world theory could be proved , if a rocket launched vertically were to land in the antipode . That is , travel in a line straight up it would eventually shore in the Pacific Ocean , somewhere southeast of New Zealand , which , according to the possibility , was like a shot above Germany .
To their credit , the city officials did n’t consent the empty Earth argument , but instead suggested making the skyrocket a human being - carry one , figuring it would be a terrific promotional material stunt for the town . Nebel agree that he could build such a rocket and have it ready to found by June 11 , 1933 .
The rocket was to be 25 feet tall and powered by a motor bring out 1,300 lb of thrust . The passenger cabin and fuel armored combat vehicle were a single , chunky unit influence something like an ordnance plate , with the motor and chute occupy a little cuticle above it . The motor unit was separate from the pilot ’s compartment by a twosome of boom that also held the fuel lines . The motor unit also had a circle of diminished vane attached for stabilization . The rocket was designed to reach an altitude of about 0.6 mile . At this point , the rider would bail out , using his own chute , while the rocket descended on a larger parachute .
A small trial projectile , 15 metrical foot tall with a motor of 440 pounds thrust , was to be built and launch first . A mental test standpoint was build and motors are tested . Under pressure from the raring city to set in motion something , a 30 - foot launching rack was erected in a cow pasture and a test arugula was fire . Out of a serial of attempts the greatest aloofness the Eruca vesicaria sativa travels is the end of the rack before sliding back down again . Eventually a more or less successful launch was made , the rocket set ashore 1,000 feet off after a more or less horizontal flight .
After this the urban center throw up its hands and abandon the labor .
A clew as to what started the entire manned rocket chronicle might be found in the name Nebel had pass his test Eruca vesicaria sativa . It was called the “ Magdeburg Pilot Rocket ” . An over - enthusiastic newsman had misunderstood the use of the news “ airplane pilot ” and had run with it .
But the approximation of a manned garden rocket still enamour Nebel , who later wrote that “ The first manned flying rocket [ sic ] will introduce a development which has rapid transport over the earth as its final goal . I admit that many masses still laugh at such plans . However , these people also express mirth and visit the programme of the Mad Baron from the Bodence to be Utopia . ”
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