FIRST STEPS TOWARD SPACE - Smithsonian Institution Libraries

NUMBER 10 137
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FIGURE 3.—Set of "Frau in Mond" with (from left) Otto Kanturck (who built sets), Hermann
Oberth, Fritz Lang (boy in front of him is one of the actors), the cameraman, Hermann Ganswindt,
and Willy Ley. Photo from Willy Ley collection.
ideas, and the vanity and self-complacency of certain
people! Up to that time, subconsciously, I had envisioned
a kind of worship of scientific research;
and I had considered German scientists as absolutely
the best.
Why, for example did Councillor Lorenz invent
one objection after the other to space travel, one
more senseless than the other, and why did he, as
second chairman of the VDI (Association of German
Engineers), make it impossible for me to comment
on his objections in the VDI periodical. 18 I think
he did this because he had said once that space
flight was impossible, and he did not want to retract
his statement. He had overlooked the fact that the
problem of repulsion is mainly a problem of impulse,
that propellants not only possess chemical
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but also a high kinetic energy which is destroyed
partly by the gas exhausting backward, but which
has to re-appear somewhere; that the amount of
this energy can only be calculated according to the
laws of thrust; and that the rocket is always at rest
with respect to itself. Another time he integrated in
wrong intervals. If a student of his had done so in
an examination, he probably would have failed
him. About the inclined trajectory towards the
east, which I had proposed, he said that every
sensible human being would have to understand
that a rocket will be most efficient if the thrust is
always in one direction, upwards and perpendicular
to the earth.
In addition to Lorenz, I would like to mention a
certain major from the Reich Ministry of Arma-