Hermann Oberth:
The Father of Spaceflight
Boris V. Rauschenbach
Clarence, New York: West-Art, 1994
Paperback, 256 pages, $15.00
Russian Academician Boris Rauschenbach's just-released biography of
German space pioneer Hermann Oberth is a unique contribution to the
literature of space history. In addition to having had the advantage
of knowing and speaking with Oberth, Rauschenbach is himself an early
space pioneer, having worked at the famous Gas Dynamics Laboratory
while a student in St. Petersburg in the 1920s.
Rauschenbach graduated from the Institute of Aviation and in 1937
joined the Moscow Scientific Rocket Research Institute, where he
worked with the "Russian Wernher von Braun," Sergei P. Korolev.
Rauschenbach headed the development of space vehicle control systems
during the first 10 years of the Space Age, which began in the Soviet
Union with the launch of Sputnik in 1957.
New Insights
Having researched Oberth for How We Got to the Moon: The Story of the German Space Pioneers , I was especially interested to see what new insights Academician Rauschenbach could bring to the history of this remarkable man.
First, he included detailed material about the periods of Oberth's
life that are not generally described, since these are Oberth's times
of working alone, not with von Braun and the rest of the German space
pioneers. Unable to secure any financial support for his rocket
experiments, in 1930 Oberth left Germany to teach in his native
Romania.
Rauschenbach relates that Oberth wrote popular as well as scientific
articles in the 1930s, traveled throughout Europe lecturing on
spaceflight, continued very modest experiments, and evaluated the
ideas of other inventors. While describing a visit to Oberth by a
Soviet expert trying to engage his services in the Soviet Union,
Rauschenbach takes the opportunity to describe the background of the
early Soviet program, in which he participated.
Peenemünde veteran Ernst Stuhlinger, who wrote the introduction
to the book, is also quoted by Rauschenbach, clarifying the details
of the Peenemünde period in Oberth's career.
Postwar Difficulties
After World War II, the limelight shifted to the
emerging U.S. and Soviet space programs and there is not much written
on Oberth, who remained in Germany. Rauschenbach describes Oberth's
difficulties in finding a job, his difficulties in understanding why
the space program now needed engineers and technicians (and not their
teachers), and how he occupied his creative mental powers in the
later years of his life. By the 1970s, Hermann Oberth had certainly
been overshadowed in the United States by his popular students,
particularly von Braun, but he was revered in other spacefaring
countries:
"In autumn of 1982 the Academy of Sciences of the USSR organized, in
connection with the 25th anniversary of the launch of the first
artificial satellites, a scientific conference, to which foreign
scientists and astronauts were also invited. Oberth was one of those
who received an invitation, although this was done more out of deep
respect for the patriarch of space travel than in the hope of
actually seeing him present among the guests. He was, after all, 88
years old at the time.
"As everyone had expected, a sincere thank-you for the invitation
came from Germany, and the message that, because of his age and his
bad health, he could not come. How great was the astonishment of the
organizing committee, when, one day before the opening of the
congress, a telegram arrived informing them that Oberth would be
making the trip after all."
Rauschenbach recalls that Oberth later explained why he had decided
to make the trip to Moscow: "There were two reasons for my decision:
concern for the future of humanity, and a long-standing desire to
visit the homeland of my highly esteemed colleague, Konstantin
Tsiolkovsky, with whom I had corresponded."
Of the three pioneers of space, only Oberth lived to see the Space
Age. From the 1950's development of the intercontinental ballistic
missile, Oberth was concerned that the rocket technology that he,
Robert Goddard, and Tsiolkovsky had pioneered to open up the universe
to manned exploration would be used by the two nuclear superpowers
against the people of the Earth.
After the conference, Oberth was given a VIP tour of Russian space
facilities, as well as the home and museum of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky.
Rauschenbach's description of Oberth's trip to Russia is most
memorable.
Hermann Oberth was a remarkable man who depended upon the integrity
and creativity of his own mind to enable him to make contributions to
mankind throughout his long life. Academician Rauschenbach's
biography does full justice to its subject. Although it has been
translated into English from German, and not the original Russian, it
is a well-written, engaging, and informative book. The photo
documentation section added by the English-language editor B. John
Zavrel, who also published the book, adds a lasting image of the life
of the father of spaceflight.
Marsha Freeman