FIRST STEPS TOWARD SPACE - Smithsonian Institution Libraries

NUMBER 10 161
FIGURE 5.—Ludvik OcenaSek and Professor Hermann Oberth
in Prague.
his radial aircraft engine, he might be deprived of
priority in his invention, and, therefore, concealed
technical details. Only a single model has survived
to the present day. It apparently is a second stage
which still contains its unburned propellant charge.
Ludvik Ocenasek's daughter has kept it, propellant
charge and all, in her household for nearly 40 years.
Chemical analysis reveals that the propellant consists
of ordinary gunpowder loaded in a specially
shaped paper container which by its form consti
tutes a nozzle.
After further experimentation, Ocenasek is said
to have devised a ground-launching apparatus to
aid in overcoming the obstacles to rapid rocket
acceleration. This equipment reportedly proved
successful, and was tested by having it catapult a
heavy sack of sand straight up into the air. Information
on this device, however, has not yet been
verified.
Ludvik Ocenasek was obliged to foresake further
investigation in the rocket field, owing to the depression
of the 1930s, which caused him to lose his
business enterprise and left him with no funds for
such research. However he continued to believe in
the feasibility of his idea—the transporting mail
from Europe to America by rocket. He was certain
it would be developed in the immediate future. In
April 1930, The New York Sun carried an article
on his activities in which he stated:
Indeed, rockets with human crews (to quote the terminology
of that time) are not improbable, although in this case many
difficult problems concerning the physiological reactions of
the human body will arise.s
However, Ocenasek did not abandon his attempts
to find some practical application of the jet propul­
sion principle. Since rocket flights were too fantastic
for his time, he tried to adapt the reaction principle
to powering a boat for shallow waters. He found
support and encouragement in the Bata Shoe Company.
The company welcomed a source of cheap
motive power for its flat-bottomed river craft which
delivered its footwear via the shallow unregulated
rivers of central Europe.
In 1933 he tested his first hydrodynamic boat
(No. 1), a small craft on which the entire fourhorsepower
power plant was mounted as an auxiliary
power package. These trials proved promising.
Streams of water were forced through jet nozzles
placed just above the surface of the water in the
river (see Figure 7). He subsequently constructed a
larger boat (No. 2) weighing 1.4 metric tons to
carry six passengers (Figure 7c). With the equipment
still relatively unperfected, this craft achieved good
results. With a draft of 7 inches (18 cm) it attained
speeds of 9 miles per hour (14 kph) and above all
displayed considerable towing potential for pulling
barges, with unusual maneuverability.
In 1935 the Czechoslovak armed forces ordered
such a jet-powered boat (No. 3) from Ocenasek, and
added it as an operational unit to its Danube River
fleet. Under full load, the boat could cruise at 15
miles per hour (24 kph), developed a pull of 1650
pounds (750 kg) and could haul 300 metric tons of
freight at 5 miles per hour (8 kph). A publicity film
about Ocenasek's hydrodynamic boat was prepared
at the time, but we have thus far been unable to
find a copy. Latest reports suggest it may have been
sent to Amsterdam.
Further orders for boats came in. Ocenasek's son
assembled four such boats in Poland; interest was
expressed by Japan, Rumania, and the Netherlands.
There exists a project design for a very large passenger-carrying
river craft. But World War II and
the occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1939 put an
end to all of Ocenasek's activities in this direction.
Thus, his most outstanding technical achievement
never was able to realize its potential.
In the years just before World War II, however,
Ocenasek had turned again to the technology of
military weapons, out of a desire to improve the
arsenal of Czechoslovakia's Army. And once again
he worked with rockets. If we know little of his first
generation of rockets, of the latter military ones
we knew even less. Ludvik Ocenasek performed
these experiments secretly in an unknown rock