In the first decade of the 20th century, the Russian Konstantin Ziolkovsky developed the theory of rocket propulsion and devised, among other things, the liquid rocket and the multi-stage rocket.
Around 1910, the American Robert Goddard started thinking about the construction of rocket engines and space flights to the moon and Mars. He was dismissed as a visionary because of his visions. In 1926 he was able to successfully test a self-developed liquid rocket for the first time and also achieved some success with his rockets. Only in the course of rocket development after the Second World War he got the recognition he deserved.
In 1923, Hermann Oberth from Transylvania published his best-known work “Die Rakete zu den Planetenräumen”. Although Oberth laid the theoretical and technical foundations for rockets and space travel with this book, it was not taken seriously in most circles and dismissed as utopian literature. Oberth experimented with the building of rockets and realized that only liquid fuel could produce enough power to reach high altitudes. From the 1940s he published to the optimization of multi-stage rockets. In 1955, Oberth met his former student Wernher von Braun in Huntsville (Alabama)/USA, who had risen to head the American missile program.
Oberth’s student Max Valier took up these ideas and became a scientific author. In 1924 he published with Oberth’s support the book “Der Vorstoss in den Weltenraum” (six editions up to 1930) and described a development program for rocket technology, which was also understandable for the public. It shows from the test stand to rocket vehicles and airplanes to the space rocket. His experiments followed this path, also with Fritz von Opel, successfully with rocket propulsion for cars, rail vehicles and airplanes, with various propulsion types and fuels. Valier died in 1930 while testing liquid fuel when a
combustor on the test stand exploded; he is considered the first victim of space travel.
In the late 1920s, there was a veritable boom in the idea of space travel in Germany thanks to the “Verein für Raumschifffahrt” and Fritz Lang’s silent movie “Frau im Mond”. This led to the establishment of the Berlin rocket airfield in Berlin-Reinickendorf, which was used for the first practical tests with rocket technology in Germany.
Wernher von Braun became an employee of Oberth from 1929 and from 1937 the technical director of the development program for military missiles in Kummersdorf and later in Peenemünde. In 1933, von Braun completed the Aggregat 1 (A1) rocket in Kummersdorf, which was not airworthy due to a faulty design. The successor model, the A2, started successfully and has already reached a height of several kilometers. The A3 (developed in 1936) was already so large that a move to Peenemünde was mandatory to test it, but the test failed. Finally, in 1942, the first A4 was completed. After a failed launch attempt, the A4 – also known as the V2 for Vergeltungswaffe 2 – finally took off from the ground in March 1942. Over the next few months, the A4’s flight performance increased steadily, finally reaching an altitude of 90 km in October 1942. It was ready to be used as a weapon. It later reached a height of 184 km, propelling the first man-made object above the definition of space at 100 km.
During the Second World War several rocket aircraft were built, but their military success was rather low. After the war, the Soviets expanded their existing program by some 3,500 German skilled workers and engineers, while the US, with Wernher von Braun and most of his closest associates, brought only the top of the Peenemünde military research institute to the United States. However, for a period of six weeks after the end of the war, the Americans transported the entire missile stock from the “Mittelwerk Dora”, which was located in the zone of occupation assigned to the Soviet Union by the Yalta Conference.
Sergei Korolyov began building missiles in the Soviet Union in the 1930s. In the course of the Great Terror he was also arrested, and only after his release in 1944 was he able to work on missile development again. Later he became the chief designer of the Soviet missile program. Korolyov’s name was kept secret from the public for a long time – official announcements spoke only of “the chief designer”.
His first major success was Sputnik 1, the first artificial earth satellite. He was launched into Earth orbit on October 4, 1957. Sputnik was continuously transmitting radio signals, this event attracted worldwide attention and gave the West the so-called Sputnik shock. The weight of the Sputnik satellite at over 80 kilograms left no doubt about the military potential of the launcher: the USSR now possessed ICBMs. In the USA, space travel was increasingly becoming a political issue and an election campaign issue. Presidential candidate John F. Kennedy commented the Sputnik launch with the words: “If the Soviets control space, then they can control the earth, just as in past centuries the nation controlled the continents that also controlled the oceans”.
With Sputnik 2, the Soviet Union launched 1957 the first living creature into earth orbit, the dog Laika. With Sputnik 5 in 1960, two dogs were not only launched into earth orbit, they also brought back both safely to earth.
The next decisive step took place on April 12, 1961, when Yuri Gagarin became the first human to orbit the earth with Vostok 1. For comparison: The first American in space Alan Shepard carried out a few weeks later on May 5, 1961 as part of the Mercury program only a 15-minute suborbital flight; it didn’t even reach Earth’s orbit.
The first spacewalk, i.e. leaving a spaceship, protected only by a spacesuit, finally succeeded Alexei A. Leonov on March 2, 1965. However, Leonov narrowly escaped with his life.
The USSR made the first orbit around the moon with Lunik 3 in 1959, which took the first photo of the moon’s far side, which is not visible from Earth, and in the same year made the first hard lunar landing with Lunik 2, in which the satellite was destroyed. In 1966, Luna 9 made the first soft lunar landing, i. e. the undamaged landing on the lunar surface. Luna 16 and Luna 20 also landed successfully on the lunar surface and brought moon rocks back to Earth, and in 1970 the first unmanned robotic vehicle drove on the moon (Lunochod 1). In the same year Venera 7 made the first soft landing on Venus.
On May 25, 1961, US President John F. Kennedy delivered his famous speech in which he promised “to land a man on the moon and bring him back safely to Earth before the end of this decade”. In 1962, the United States finally succeeded in bringing John Glenn, the first American safely into orbit and back. The Mercury program now has a successor, the Gemini program. This programme tested various techniques, all of which would be required for the subsequent lunar landing. An important step was the Gemini 6 and 7 missions, which were launched in quick succession to test the approach of two spacecraft – a docking maneuver did not take place, however, this was carried out successfully for the first time with Gemini 8.
The Saturn rocket, which made its maiden flight on November 9, 1967, was developed as the carrier system for the Apollo missions. The Apollo 7 mission was the first manned test of the complete system in Earth orbit, and the Apollo 8 mission orbited the moon for the first time in 1968. On the evening of July 20, 1969 at 9:17 p.m. (CET), the lunar module “Eagle” of the spaceship Apollo 11 “Columbia” touched down on the lunar surface. Neil
Armstrong left the lunar module six hours later, on July 21 at 03:56 (CET) and became the first human to set foot on the moon. Meanwhile, he coined the legendary saying: “That’s one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind”. On December 7, 1972, Apollo 17 was the last manned journey to Earth’s satellite.
After the end of the Apollo program, no one left the immediate vicinity of the earth. The focus of manned spaceflight was the development of reusable transport systems (Space Shuttle, Buran) and space stations in Earth orbit. The first space stations were launched in the early 1970s (the Soviet Salyut 1 in 1971 and the American Skylab in 1973). In February 1986, the Soviet Union launched the base module of the Mir space station, which was later
expanded and was the longest operated space station till the ISS, with a duration of 15 years. The International Space Station (ISS) has been permanently manned since November 2000, but further expansion of the station was temporarily stopped after the Columbia accident and the crew was reduced to two people by 2006.
In April 1981, the US Space Shuttle Columbia was the first launch of a Space Shuttle. Two tragic accidents marred the otherwise good track record of the shuttles: the destruction of the Challenger on January 28, 1986, shortly after take-off, and the crash of the Columbia on February 1, 2003, during landing. After an interruption of two and a half years, the shuttle program was resumed with the launch of the space shuttle Discovery on July 26, 2005.
On October 15, 2003, the People’s Republic of China, with the spacecraft Shenzhou 5, became the third nation after the Soviet Union and the USA, to bring people into space with its own space system.
On July 8, 2011, the Space Shuttle Atlantis successfully launched on its final mission (STS-135). Two days later, on July 10, Atlantis docked with the ISS. On July 19, Atlantis left the ISS. On July 21, 2011, Atlantis landed at Cape Canaveral, Florida, marking the end of the shuttle era 30 years after Columbia’s first flight in 1981.