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FIRST STEPS TOWARD SPACE - Smithsonian Institution Libraries

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244 SMITHSONIAN ANNALS OF FLIGHT<br />

FIGURE 8.—Experimental construction of the cooling system of a 100,000-kg high-pressure combustion<br />

chamber.<br />

Summary<br />

Walter Dornberger appropriately wrote in his<br />

book V 2: "Man's technical progress does not come<br />

only from men with great ideas, but almost as<br />

frequently from those who first apply unshakable<br />

faith and tireless energy to an idea's materialization."<br />

27<br />

Besides patentable intellectual authorship, investigations<br />

of priority claims to technical inventions<br />

should consider two more achievements which<br />

are almost equivalent to mental conception but<br />

require such entirely different human talents that<br />

priority in all three phases of a forthcoming invention<br />

is seldom combined in one and the same<br />

engineer. The process of transforming the mental<br />

Conception<br />

Patent<br />

Hardware<br />

Testing<br />

concept of an invention into a design suitable for<br />

production represents a second step, and its successful<br />

solution also is an original accomplishment.<br />

The same holds true for the next step; to demonstrate<br />

successfully the manufactured hardware of a<br />

novel system by testing is also no routine work,<br />

but a pioneering feat. In technically defining these<br />

three steps, each has its own designation, namely<br />

"Research," "Development," and "Testing," which<br />

in turn require different skills from the technologist.<br />

Considering these facts, a timetable on priorities<br />

of the most important cooling methods for liquid<br />

rocket powerplants would, as far as is known, stand<br />

as follows:<br />

LIKELY PRIORITIES FOR DEVELOPMENT OF DYNAMIC, REGENERATIVE COOLING METHODS FOR LIQUID-FUEL ROCKETS<br />

Internal<br />

cooling<br />

Oberth 1923<br />

nothing known<br />

Pohlmann 1938<br />

Peenemunde<br />

team 1939<br />

External<br />

surface cooling<br />

Tsiolkovskiy 1928<br />

nothing known<br />

Walter Riedel and<br />

Arthur Rudolph<br />

winter 1932 (or<br />

perhaps spring 1931)<br />

Walter Riedel, von<br />

Braun, Dornberger<br />

21 December 1932<br />

External forcedflow<br />

cooling<br />

Sanger 7 February 1934<br />

Sanger 9 February 1935<br />

Sanger 20 March 1934<br />

Sanger 7 May 1934<br />

Combined regenerative<br />

cooling with steam<br />

Sanger 9 May 1934<br />

Sanger 25 October 1938<br />

Sanger August 1940<br />

(probably earlier)<br />

Sanger 18 February 1941

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