The Complete Book of Spaceflight: From Apollo 1 to Zero Gravity

360 Sander, Friedrich Wilhelm
had been launched three months earlier. The design
of this latest station’s solar panels allowed for the
installation of additional sections to increase its
power supply. Soviet designers also hoped eventually
to equip Salyut 7 with complex electrically driven
wheels, known as gyrodines, to allow the station to
orient itself without propellant. Designers expected
the gyrodines to be sent to Salyut 7 aboard a special
module that would also carry a permanent astronomy
payload called Kvant 1. Delays in development, however,
kept Kvant 1 on the ground until Mir was
launched. However, Salyut 7 crews further pushed the
limits of human spaceflight. By 1986, four longduration
crews and five shorter-term crews had lived
aboard the station. As is often the case in space exploration,
some of the most valuable lessons of Salyut 7
came from its failures. One day in September 1983,
fuel started spilling from a propellant line, apparently
because of a meteor strike. The crew working aboard
Salyut 7 in 1984 performed surgical work outside the
Sander, Friedrich Wilhelm
A German entrepreneur and manufacturer of black powder
rockets who rose to fame in the 1920s and 1930s
through his involvement, with Max Valier and Fritz von
Opel, in the development of a variety of rocket-powered
cars, sleds, gliders, and airplanes.
Sänger, Eugen (1905–1964)
An Austrian engineer, born in Pressnitz, Bohemia, who
carried out pioneering work on the design of space
planes and other novel forms of space transport. As a 13year-old,
his thoughts were turned toward space travel by
reading Kurd Lasswitz’s science fiction novel On Two
Planets (1897). In choosing a career he was again influenced
by a space classic—Hermann Oberth’s The Rocket
into Interplanetary Space. Reading this in the fall of 1923
San Marco Missions
station, isolating the damaged portion of the line and
installing a bypass section. On February 11, 1985, as
Salyut 7 was flying unmanned, a ground controller
accidentally cut off communications with the station,
leaving it out of control and disabled. All that could
be done was to track the station’s position with
defense radar. A rescue crew, including Vladimir
Djanibekov and Valeri Savinukh, was launched on
June 6, 1985. For the first time, a crew manually
docked to a totally disabled space station. When the
cosmonauts entered the station, they found their
future home with no lights, heat, or power. Large icicles
hung from the life support system pipes, and all
water aboard the station had frozen. As the cosmonauts’
own limited supply of water and food was running
out, it took an intensive effort to rehabilitate the
facility. By the beginning of 1986, Salyut 7 was back
in working order. Meanwhile, at Baikonur, preparations
were under way for the launch of a new space
station—Mir.
encouraged him to switch from the course in civil engineering
that he had just begun at the Technical University
of Graz to a course in aeronautics. As an assistant at
the Technical University in Vienna (1930–1935), he continued
his systematic mathematical investigations of
rocket engines. In contrast to Oberth and others, Sänger
was convinced that the best means to reach space was
through a combination of rocket and aircraft technology.
He thus closely examined the idea of a space plane, made
engine calculations and carried out investigations into
the most suitable propellants, and finally set up a laboratory,
in which he conducted experiments on forcedcirculation-cooled
liquid propellant rocket engines. The
results of his work appeared in The Technology of Rocket
Flight 257 —the first scientific study of space planes. From
1936 to 1945, Sänger directed rocket research for the
Spacecraft Date
Launch
Vehicle Site Orbit Mass (kg)
San Marco 1 Dec. 15, 1964 Scout X-4 Wallops Island 200 × 842 km × 37.8° 254
San Marco 2 Apr. 26, 1967 Scout B San Marco 219 × 741 km × 2.9° 129
San Marco 3 Apr. 24, 1971 Scout B San Marco 222 × 707 km × 3.2° 164
San Marco 4 Feb. 18, 1974 Scout D San Marco 270 × 875 km × 2.9° 164
San Marco D/L Mar. 25, 1988 Scout G San Marco 268 × 625 km × 3.0° 236