THE CHALLENGE OF OUTER SPACE

[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] gentlemen we please take this seat so we can begin today's conference I take great deal of pleasure in presenting to you today is our guest speaker dr. Wernher von Braun gentlemen the conquest of outer space is the greatest technological challenge of the age in which we live the first decisive step in the compass of space will be the placing of an object into an orbit wherein it world indefinitely south of the earth takes a speed of approximately 18,000 miles per hour to accomplish this and this is approximately three times the way to speed Everdeen rockets today how can we reach such a speed first of all of course one could think of improving propellants used in present-day rockets secondly we could shave some ways of our designs but the posses the methods it does not appear possible to be more than approximately 40 or 50 percent of the speed that rocket reaches today a fundamental step ahead in increasing the speed will be the application of the multistage principle let us take a look at slide you see a model of the three-stage rocket on this picture up to this lower white line here is the first stage it is powered by a number of rocket engines which will lift the middle off the ground until it has reached after approximately one minute operating time a maximum speed in the order of 3,600 to 4000 miles per hour at this point the first stage is jettisoned its tanks are now burned out and the rocket motors of the second stage take over the second stage as the velocity increment of approximately six to eight thousand feet per second to that of the first stage and after this speed of approximately 12,000 feet per second has been reached the second stage likewise exhausted would be dropped now the rocket motor in the last or top stage will take over this top stage will now forge ahead an initial speed of roughly 12,000 miles per hour also the final orbital speed of 18,000 miles has been reached this speed is sufficient to keep the top stage in the orbit now what exactly makes the orbit tick imagine you put a gun on top of the mountain and fire to horizontal direction the gravitational pull of the earth would pull these bullet down towards the ground and after having travelled a certain distance the bullets will finally strike the ground now as we increase the muzzle velocity the bullets will travel farther and at a certain speed the car virtua caused by the gravitational pull of the earth which pulls the bullet down will exactly match the curvature of the earth the bullet will then keep on flying around the earth and will fall and fall never been able to reach the surface of the earth until it finally hits the breech of the gun from the rear this is an orbit you can establish such orbits at various altitudes theoretically you could establish one immediately above the ground but of course interference with the atmosphere would slow the bullet down of the orbit will be stable so we have to go outside of the atmosphere but once we are outside of the atmosphere we have a free choice of any altitude we want and the higher we go the slower will be the velocity required to balance the gravitational pull of the earth for it is the centripetal force in the curves orbit that cancels the gravitational pull of the earth who keeps the object in its stable orbit the moon has been doing this for a number of million years and the earth is orbiting around the Sun so the principle is well known and proven and Mother Nature's pattern of things with such a rocket cause we couldn't return back from the orbit and we are thinking of shooting people into an orbit we have to provide ways means of returning them safely to the surface of Europe here we have replaced the top stage of the rocket by a wing airplane type stage which would carry personal to the orbit this wings top stage would attain the same orbital conditions as a non wing version that you saw in the previous slide but for the help of these wings the top stage would be able to return to the earth this picture here shows the pattern of the track of ascent of such a three-stage rocket ship the ship would take off vertically and soon after takeoff it is tilted into a slanting flight path so that after the one minute of easy speckles of burning pan of the first stages over the rocket would fly on an angle approximately 20 degrees against the horizon at this point the first stage is proper to the second stage takes over as burn out of the second stage approximately 2 minutes later the travel of the rocket will be almost horizontal we drop the second at an altitude of approximately 60 to 80 miles the rocket has now attained the speed of 12,000 miles per hour and the third stage now takes over until the final speed of 18,000 miles power has been reached doing this powered flight path of the third stage the rocket would hardly do any altitude so that the rocket still is only about 60 miles up at the tile cut off of the last stage is reached if the third stage would reach exactly circular orbital conditions define a simple condition that the centrifugal force would match the gravitational pull and therefore the curvature of the orbit would exactly match the curvature of the earth piece a third stage would then stay in a circular orbit 60 miles up but if we provide a little more speed for the third stage we have some excess velocity and excess centripetal force which would carry the upper stage the top stage even farther away from the earth the rocket would then go into an elliptic orbit which aft after going halfway around the earth would reach an Apogee without the two depends only on the excess velocities over circular orbital speed that we had at the moment of cutoff we allow the rocket to continue through this elliptical trajectory it would go back to the perigee the lowest point which was identical with the cutoff point of the last stage in which steel in such an elliptic orbit begin forever now when I see forever I have to qualify this every time the rocket would go through the pair of jeans only 60 miles up it would be slightly by the aerodynamic drag caused by the traces of the atmosphere as to other than altitude so every time it could go through the perigee it would lose a little bit of an excess speed and as a result the next Apogee would be somewhat lower and this scratch-off loss in excess speeds would gradually lead to a conversion of the elliptic orbit into a circular orbit 60 miles up and after this has been accomplished the missile would appear the ship would be subjected to atmospheric drag throughout the entire slide around the earth and from then on las casas would lose speed rather rapidly but for the helps the wings would be able to land again if it had no wings would you stand into the deeper atmosphere ultimately burn up and crash during the ascent of such a three-stage rocket ship the crew will be subjected to high acceleration of course initially as the ship takes off the ship is still heavy and the acceleration will not be too high but as it loses weight due to fuel consumption and with a thrust remaining constant this acceleration will gradually increase and the first peak and the acceleration curve will be reached at the moment of cutoff of the first stage since all the powerful motors the first stage is pushing the ship and the first siege tanks which constitute approximately 75% of the total ships we've almost empty the acceleration peak at this point would be approximately 9g it can be kept lower if desired but only at the expense of a slightly higher fuel consumption after this first peak the acceleration would go down to about one and a half G again when the smaller motors the second stage take over and of course the second stage tanks are still full the second peak will then be to be reached at cutoff of the second stage again approximately 90 and finally another third piece the acceleration curve will be reached at cutoff of the sub speech but it won't be quite that high because the third stage carries the P load and in addition if it's an earth returnable wings of a stage the propellants required for the return flight one of the awesome tasks and preparing the crew for such rocket ships will be to make this cruise work as a team under these harsh acceleration conditions the tools the trained to use for this condition is the centrifuge now centrifuge like the one you see on this picture here are in Jews in the Armed Forces to check people for their black out limit by adopting the same principle and just making these nut shells at the tip of the 22 Slava we can place an entire pool into the nozzle and train them as a team this is shown here on the next picture we have an entire replica of the passenger Michelle attached to the room of the centrifuge we cannot only whirl it around and expose the mental acceleration we can rotate these nacelle as it swings around to simulate erratic flight conditions under which the tool must likewise take the necessary emergency measures let us take a look at the inside of this replica of the crew compartment during a centrifuge test here you see the men sitting one behind the other exposed to the heat or ninety acceleration and suppose take the necessary emergency measure after an outside operator has portrayed a certain emergency situation on their dashboard panel high accelerations are only one part of the problem to which the crew is subjective weightlessness the opposite of high acceleration is another what causes weightlessness and when does it occur in rocket ships you often hear that weak listeners is encountered only after a ship has left the gravitational field of the earth this is not true weightlessness in a rocket ship actually occurs the moment the engines are cut off and the ship is coasting freely and outside of the atmosphere through with any trajectory on orbit for that matter what causes weightlessness we as we know it it actually is the cause not only of gravity but also of the floor on which we stand and which prevents us from freely following the pull of gravity in other words it always seeks gravity and the rigid supports to create the sensation of weight as you will straw that support and permit the bodies to freelee's follow the pull of gravity that body is weightless if you jump from a diving board into the water you're weightless for a second or so until you hit the water and if you are flying in a rocket ship that is not powered your body is subjected to the same laws of motion that's the ship the subject the tour in which you travel as a result that can be no differential forces between you and the ship and you will float freely within the cabin of the ship now can we simulate weightless conditions on the ground it is very difficult because usually any weightless condition is always terminated by an impact because it builds up speed if we do it in the gravitational field of the earth but there is one possibility of simulating it if you look at this chart you will see down here in the left lower corner the trajectory of the airplane that comes down in an incline dives and pulls out of the dives and goes through is ballistic trajectory this ballistic trajectory is essentially a parabola wherein the aerodynamic drag is just compensated as the thrust of the jet engine of the plane if you can steer the plane through this ballistic trajectory as you live so that we have no lift forces and at the same time keep it on a proper course and just compensate the drag with your engine you go through such a parabola of course on the descending leg of the parabola the plane will pick up speed again and sooner or later you have to pull the plane out of the parabola but during that period which in a modern jet fighter can be extended for approximately 40 seconds he can simulate the weightless conditions she would do the same thing with an advanced rocket clean fifties modern rocketry stops planes it appears possible to extend this condition for approximately three minutes under this flight condition through the ballistic trajectory you have weightlessness such a long three minute weightless ballistics parabola is shown in the upper part of the Spectre the next slide shows what happens inside an airplane through such a ballistic trajectory you see a little matchbox floating in the left of a call out the canopy this matchbox was released by a passenger in this flight or was photographed by him to show that the matchbox is actually floating freely in the canopy and it's rooted there for approximately 40 seconds in fact eyelids who have repeatedly flown to such ballistic trajectories even do such free-floating objects to make sure that they are right out of the weightless conditions if they apply a positive or a negative lift the matchbox will come up and down they are too little or too much thrust so that the either under or over compensate the aerodynamic drag the matchbox move for our app this condition which as I said can be simulated forty seconds now and for maybe three minutes with advanced rocket airplanes would be a permanent experience in any orbiting rocketship what will happen when men are subjected to this condition well we know that a man can eat and drink even in the horizontal position and if you try it you'll find that you can even eat upside down will the blood circulation be affected medical doctors think that they will not because the most important factor on the blood circulation is the drag the resistance of the blood in the vein and the arteries and gravity please only a minor part in it well in fact you can lie horizontally in your bed and you can get up and you're half circle isn't hardly affected but nobody knows today our extended weightlessness will affect people some doctors believe the most spiritual pressure will be the sense of equilibrium in the inner ear there's a little pebble in the inner ear both inner ears called the ocean lights which rests on some hairs and on whichever hears the arrest with an indication this is Darwin you move your head forward that cable moves on a another set of ears we have a different indication of the plumb-bob direction on a weightless conditions this pebble of course is in a disoriented and simply floats without touching any year or may erratically touch here here and the hair there the question is how will you react the feeling as some people may get seasick maybe they can get used to it in these flights through ballistic trajectories people have been trained to draw little sketches and the interesting thing was the sketches improved after only repeatedly through the experience so all we can say today is that there's reasonable hope that people can be trained and accustomed to this unique condition of weightlessness so you see this weightless condition actually exists in the rocket flying unpowered outside of the atmosphere now what happens when our ship gets into the orbit on this picture we have assumed that the ship took off of an island in the Pacific and climbs into mines under about 65 degrees to the equator so the ascent is on a northeasterly course shortly after having left the island affects about a thousand miles downrange the last stage has reached terminal velocity but since it has to exist velocity over and above circular orbital speed at that altitude it now receives further away from the earth on power and reaches the Apple just 180 degrees from the right upper corner of this floor if we want to establish our rocket in a circular orbit at this altitude a thousand and seventy miles up we have to provide a little extra kick in this apogee to prevent the rocket from going down to the perigee allowed into the 60 miles again this is the minor maneuver requiring only about 15 seconds of power applications after here and we have given the third stage this extra kick is now permanently established in the circular orbit a thousand 75 miles out this picture here shows the interaction between substance orbit and the rotation of the earth in a thousand and seventy five mile orbit the ship will go around the earth once every two hours but the earth itself will rotate inside the orbit at a rate of one revolution in 24 hours as a result the orbital station will pass the equator each time and a different meridian and an observer in the ship will see different portions of the earth overflown during a period of 24 hours in fact within a period of 24 hours it will have the opportunity to see every point on earth at least one and this is one of the reasons why I believe that such a man orbital station station will have a terrific military importance both as a reconnaissance station and possibly even as a bombing platform it has been suggested to build a manned space station in such an orbit a thousand in 75 miles up to our orbit but the fact one could build such a station would be necessary to provide facilities or equipment so that people can leave their orbiting ship since the orbit rise in the vacuum of outer space it could be necessary for anyone to leave the ship to Don a pressurized suit the man is essentially garbed into a fiber reinforced rubber suit with flexible joints and it is possible to work with such a suit also there's a 1/2 of normal atmospheric pressure inside the suit this questionably however whether such a suit fashioned after the human shape is quite ideal for assembly operations to be performed in an orbit in the first place in order to build something you usually don't need your feet but all or only your hands well technically you have to use quite complicated tools to do a decent assembly job and in orbit for this reason I believe that space suits to be used for such orbital assembly work may actually look quite different the next slide shows what they might look like this is actually no longer a suit that looks more like a coke bottle it is a rigid container which is pressurized inside with a man looking out through a glass to the top the operator would be strapped to a kind of pouch inside this bottle and can turn himself around within the bottle in front of him will be a wood panel of instruments to which he can operate these artificial arms that you see sticking out from the bottle the arms can be retracted and at the end of each arm can be a different kind of tool it may be a hook or it may be a drilling head with various speed drills or there may be pliers or wrenches and support the entire system would be fashioned after the method of operating amputees arms the man could move himself around by a built-in gyroscope for chicken to control with a steering stick so as to require any special attitude he wishes I just the potential forces of the gyro there will also be two small rocket motors one on top of this canopies and the other at the bottom of the bottle which could be used for 10,000 motion the thrust required would be all on the order of a few pounds with such equipment we could see the think of assembling an orbital station now what will certain organs be a season look like I don't know maybe this smarter to build a number of small ones maybe we want to plant a lot of equipment in your lab station this is immaterial on the right side of this picture you see a large will stay shaped Space Station which should be construed more or less as a proposal as to what you could possibly do with a Space Station and it's not necessarily a proposal where the species must look exactly like this thing in particular must be that large in fact it can be a lot smaller if you want to reduce the equipment aboard oh please are there several smaller ones the wheels chief has been treating for the purpose of doing away with the permanent waitress conditions prevailing in the orbit by putting a spin on such a wheel you could provide an artificial or synthetic gravity in the rim the we would simply spin slowly about it and by putting the right spin on you can either simulate onesy acceleration in the rim or 1/3 of a gess considered sufficient any rate you can give people their weight back the people of God would live in the rim the whole how would it be possible to build such a large station in an orbit and how could we bring the equipment up to do this the cargo holds in even large rocket ships will always be limited so one of the most important things will be that is that you can ship the part up small enough so they can be stowed away in the cargo hold one way of doing it would be to fold them together and in this particular proposal I'd envisioned to build the space station of 10 or 15 segments of rubber implicated fiberglass or some material similar to that used in rubber flutes a rubber raft and put the ring shaped space station together from these sections after the assembly has been completed and all these sections have been drawn together the entire unit can be inflated like an automobile tire and this would provide not only the necessary rigidity to the structure but also the atmosphere within the tire in which people could live of course for an extended stay it would be nest a to replenish the air and provide an air conditioning system and oxygen replenishing systems and co2 removal systems in in the stable inside such as base stations may contain all sorts of earth equipment there will be laboratories in the rim where phenomena can be studied which are not accessible to experimentation on the ground such experiments may include questions involving biological and geological life conditions of outer space cosmic radiation meteorological research whereby the earth can be observed from the outside astronomical laboratories etc close to the space station there will be a powerful telescope if you in this telescope at the heavens you can seize the planet unblurred by atmospheric effects and we can expect to be able to take photographs of planets like Mars or Jupiter which with unprecedented clarity she turned the seen telescope to the ground it would be able to distinguish as much detail as you can see from a plane say four or five thousand feet up this of course offers tremendous possibilities reconnaissance and post reconnaissance in the civilian tents as in the military sense the civilians reconnaissance I mean iceberg Wallace could be flashed to ships expeditions could be observed as they proceed on the Arctic claims and military reconnaissance cost means that we could keep a watchful eye on countries not accessible material become an aircraft as far as the military application of the station is concerned it seems even feasible to use such a platform in space as a base for the bombing of objects on the ground and it is my opinion that such bonding could be carried out to the unprecedented accuracy from such a station the most important application of a space station however will be that it could conserve at the jump off pieces or trips in the deepest be