FIRST STEPS TOWARD SPACE - Smithsonian Institution Libraries

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The Development of Regeneratively Cooled Liquid Rocket Engines
in Austria and Germany, 1926-42
IRENE SANGER-BREDT AND ROLF ENGEL, German Federal Republic
Introduction
With the ultimate goal of conquering the vastness
of space outside the earth's atmosphere, the technical
development of a suitable propulsion system,
the liquid-propellant rocket engine, began during
the mid-twenties of this century at two different
places within the boundaries of the German speaking
countries. Both developments were carried out
independently of each other and almost simultaneously,
but with slightly different technical objectives.
In northern Germany, in Reinickendorf on the
outskirts of Berlin, a group of young enthusiasts
from the "Verein fiir Raumschiffahrt" (Society for
Space Travel) under the direction of Rudolf Nebel
and Klaus Riedel tried to implement man's first
step into space by developing a wingless liquidpropellant
rocket based on the Oberth concept and
designed to take off vertically. Among others in
this group were Wernher von Braun, Rolf Engel,
and Willy Ley.
In Austria, Eugen Sanger, a young civil engineering
candidate at the Technical University in
Vienna, tried to pursue the same goal by developing
a manned spacecraft with liquid propulsion.
During most of his experimental work on propulsion
systems, carried out in a shed of the old
"Bauhof" building on Dreihufengasse, he was assisted
only by two other students, the brothers
Friedrich and Stefan Sztatecsny.
Both groups had been encouraged in their efforts
by the publications of Hermann Oberth, especially
by his book Die Rakete zu den Planetenraumen
(The Rocket into Interplanetary Space), brought
out in 1923 by the publishing firm of Oldenbourg
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in Munich. The work of the German group received
additional stimulation by direct co-operation
with Hermann Oberth during the years 1929 and
1930. Members of both groups also indicated, however,
that Kurd Lasswitz' science-fiction novel Auf
zwei Planeten (On Two Planets) published in 1897,
had been the very first stimulus to setting their
technical goals.
Both groups also had in common that they
worked on their own, without public funds, financed
only by small donations from a few industrialists
and private associations, and that sometimes
their efforts were barely tolerated or even
met with opposition from their contemporaries. It
is well known that some of them who were less well
off, and their families, went hungry in order to be
able to go on with their work; and they even had to
pay for the printing of their publications that later
were to attract world fame. Also, with the exception
of one person, none of them ever got a penny in
license fees for the patents which opened a new era
for mankind and are still being used by the major
aerospace companies all over the world. Rudolf
Nebel was the one exception: upon disbandment
of the Rakentenflugplatz Berlin (Rocket Field
Berlin) in 1934, he received 75,000 reichsmarks from
the Third Reich as a one-time indemnification.
As to their technical approach, both groups chose
as energy source for their propulsion system the
combustion heat of various hydrocarbons in oxygen.
The two propellants were fed separately, either by
compressed gas or pumps, into the injection system
of the combustion chamber formed by metal walls
leading, in most cases, into a Laval-type nozzle.
While the work of the German group clearly
aimed at launch and ballistic flight tests, Sanger in