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Von Braun rockets on Encyclopedia Astronautica
If this was posted before, forgive me, but I just spotted it. Mark Wade
has put up a new section devoted to Wernher von Braun's rocket designs of the 1950's, such as appeared in the Colliers articles and Disney programs; and will appear any-year-now in David Sander's "Man Conquers Space" movie: http://www.astronautix.com/lvfam/vonbraun.htm Pat |
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Von Braun rockets on Encyclopedia Astronautica
Pat Flannery wrote:
If this was posted before, forgive me, but I just spotted it. Mark Wade has put up a new section devoted to Wernher von Braun's rocket designs of the 1950's, such as appeared in the Colliers articles and Disney programs; and will appear any-year-now in David Sander's "Man Conquers Space" movie: http://www.astronautix.com/lvfam/vonbraun.htm Two of the designs there are the A-11 and A-12. I've been tryign to hunt them down for some years myself, and have coem to this conclusion: They're bull****. Actually, I believe that von Braun may have thought about such space launchers during the war years, but probably never put anythign on paper. But after the war, while being interrorgated by the US Army, suddenly he had these concepts for very impressive vehicles... job insurance. I've been in tought with a few of the remaining Peenemunde rocketeers over the years, and they have all claimed that the A-11 was not soemthign that was worked on in Germany. Specific notes: The 1946 White Sands artwork for a V-2 derived 3-stage satellite launcher sure looks like Peenemunde design, at least at first. The third stage is clearly a V-2, the second clearly an A-10, and the first sure seems to be a related design. Hopwever... note that *all* *three* stages have their full-sized fins. That's nutty. And on the A-12: in post war publications, von Braun described the A-12 as being three stage, not four, with the third stage being a winged A-10 carrying Shuttle-class payload. -- Scott Lowther, Engineer Remove the obvious (capitalized) anti-spam gibberish from the reply-to e-mail address |
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Von Braun rockets on Encyclopedia Astronautica
P.S. Sadly, Mark Wade is continuing the mythology that the A-9/A-10 ICBM
was to be manned. Bah! -- Scott Lowther, Engineer Remove the obvious (capitalized) anti-spam gibberish from the reply-to e-mail address |
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Von Braun rockets on Encyclopedia Astronautica
Scott Lowther wrote:
Two of the designs there are the A-11 and A-12. I've been tryign to hunt them down for some years myself, and have coem to this conclusion: They're bull****. Actually, I believe that von Braun may have thought about such space launchers during the war years, but probably never put anythign on paper. That's pretty much the the same conclusion I came to- if anything, they were just some mathematical exercises, not real plans. But after the war, while being interrorgated by the US Army, suddenly he had these concepts for very impressive vehicles... job insurance. I've been in tought with a few of the remaining Peenemunde rocketeers over the years, and they have all claimed that the A-11 was not soemthign that was worked on in Germany. Specific notes: The 1946 White Sands artwork for a V-2 derived 3-stage satellite launcher sure looks like Peenemunde design, at least at first. The third stage is clearly a V-2, the second clearly an A-10, and the first sure seems to be a related design. Hopwever... note that *all* *three* stages have their full-sized fins. That's nutty. Yeah, but it made a great Hawk Model Company rocket ship; first they marketed it as a "Atlas", then a "Saturn" rocket. I particularly liked the door at the base of the first stage for the crew to board it. (?) And on the A-12: in post war publications, von Braun described the A-12 as being three stage, not four, with the third stage being a winged A-10 carrying Shuttle-class payload. That's also what I've read. Pat |
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Von Braun rockets on Encyclopedia Astronautica
Scott Lowther wrote:
P.S. Sadly, Mark Wade is continuing the mythology that the A-9/A-10 ICBM was to be manned. Bah! It would be interesting to know how they intended to get it within a hundred miles of either New York City or Washington D.C. with their then-current guidance technology, particularly given the effect of winds on the A9's gliding descent; the only thing I could come up with is that an agent was supposed to put some sort of homing beacon at the target for the missile to seek out; or two U-boats were supposed to surface at night and transmit coded and crossed radio beams, ala theground-based system used by the German Luftwaffe against the British...the A9 would glide down one of the beams under automatic control till it was crossed by the other- then dive onto the target. Pat |
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Von Braun rockets on Encyclopedia Astronautica
Pat Flannery wrote:
Scott Lowther wrote: P.S. Sadly, Mark Wade is continuing the mythology that the A-9/A-10 ICBM was to be manned. Bah! It would be interesting to know how they intended to get it within a hundred miles of either New York City or Washington D.C. with their then-current guidance technology, Sheer luck, and hard work. That was acknowledged as one of the problems with the concept. And the fact is, Hitler (oddly) had a serious distaste for Kamikaze weapons, right up to the end of the war, when he finally okayed manned Fi-103 (V-1 buzzbombs). The notion that he would have given the okay for a manned V-2 weapons system anytime prior to late 44 is laughable. The A-9/A-10 would have simply been fired many times in hope of nailing something interesting in Manhattan. They might have gotten away with it had they kept France and control of the eastern Atlantic, as the launch sites were in France and the splashdown sites for the recoverable and reusable (!) A-10 stages was a few hundred miles offshore. -- Scott Lowther, Engineer Remove the obvious (capitalized) anti-spam gibberish from the reply-to e-mail address |
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Von Braun rockets on Encyclopedia Astronautica
Scott Lowther wrote:
The notion that he would have given the okay for a manned V-2 weapons system anytime prior to late 44 is laughable. Of course that's just when the A9/A10 program gets restarted, so maybe... the jet stream is going to have a deleterious affect on the A9's range heading westward; and they still didn't have a clue about reentry heating, although the W.W. II cutaway of the manned rocket/ramjet driven A9 variant seems to suggest some sort of cooling of the wing leading edge via the vehicle's propellants. The other thing they never addressed was how to keep the A9 stable during the exo-atmospheric part of the flight after motor burnout. The A-9/A-10 would have simply been fired many times in hope of nailing something interesting in Manhattan. They might have gotten away with it had they kept France and control of the eastern Atlantic, as the launch sites were in France I thought they were supposed to be in Spain. Pat |
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Von Braun rockets on Encyclopedia Astronautica
Pat Flannery wrote:
Scott Lowther wrote: The notion that he would have given the okay for a manned V-2 weapons system anytime prior to late 44 is laughable. Of course that's just when the A9/A10 program gets restarted, The A-10 never really got restarted. The A-4b (A-9) did get a go, but it was single stage. the W.W. II cutaway of the manned rocket/ramjet driven A9 variant seems to suggest some sort of cooling of the wing leading edge via the vehicle's propellants. Erm... no. It had leading edge flaps. The other thing they never addressed was how to keep the A9 stable during the exo-atmospheric part of the flight after motor burnout. Probably the same way the V-2 was to be kept stable exoatmospherically: it wasn't. launch sites were in France I thought they were supposed to be in Spain. Nope. That would have required a conquest of Spain... certainly the Nazis thought they could do it, but one more headache. The A-9/10 actually had some launch sites under construction in France, IIRC. -- Scott Lowther, Engineer Remove the obvious (capitalized) anti-spam gibberish from the reply-to e-mail address |
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Von Braun rockets on Encyclopedia Astronautica
Scott Lowther wrote:
P.S. Sadly, Mark Wade is continuing the mythology that the A-9/A-10 ICBM was to be manned. Bah! Mark's accuracy in many matters is questionable. D. -- The STS-107 Columbia Loss FAQ can be found at the following URLs: Text-Only Version: http://www.io.com/~o_m/columbia_loss_faq.html Enhanced HTML Version: http://www.io.com/~o_m/columbia_loss_faq_x.html Corrections, comments, and additions should be e-mailed to , as well as posted to sci.space.history and sci.space.shuttle for discussion. |
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Von Braun rockets on Encyclopedia Astronautica
Scott Lowther wrote:
the W.W. II cutaway of the manned rocket/ramjet driven A9 variant seems to suggest some sort of cooling of the wing leading edge via the vehicle's propellants. Erm... no. It had leading edge flaps. The original perspective cutaway in G. Harry Stine's "ICBM" shows the wing leading edge slats in a different shading than the rest of the wing, and at their leading edge they abut the alcohol tank. Visible just below the leading edge (the drawing is from slightly above and forward of a side view) is a circular or spherical "something" that is either a feed pipe to the leading edge of the wing, or the lens opening of the camera equipment. The same drawing in "V Missiles of the Third Reich" makes it look more like a piece of equipment than a camera window. If a Peenemunde engineer wanted to cool something that was going to get hot, what would be more natural than for him to fall back on a variation of the regenerative cooling of the rocket motor's combustion chamber and nozzle? Both the SR-71 and Concorde kept their insides cool by sending fuel from their tanks through their exterior structure on its way to the engines. The other thing they never addressed was how to keep the A9 stable during the exo-atmospheric part of the flight after motor burnout. Probably the same way the V-2 was to be kept stable exoatmospherically: it wasn't. Getting the dart shaped V-2 to come down pointy-end first wasn't a problem with its tail fins, it would stabilize on the way in, no matter how it first contacted the atmosphere; but in the case of the A9, there would be the concern that it come in right-side-up with the wings level, and not tail-end forward with the wings vertical, for instance. The X-15 came in sideways once, and the result wasn't good. The Antipodal Bomber would have had this same problem, and it doesn't have any obvious means of addressing it either. When I built my 1/32 scale manned A9 model, I gave it a fair amount of dihedral (as the W.W. II drawings showed), so that at least it doesn't end up gliding with the pilot either. When The A-9/10 actually had some launch sites under construction in France, IIRC. Only in Philip Henshall's mind; the old boy went to France and brought back wonderful stories of A9 silos and A9/A10 bunkers and nifty buildings where V-1's and V-2's were to be launched within a few feet of each other (like either the Luftwaffe or SS would go for that); then somebody actually went over and checked out what he had described... and found that he had been "making it up as he went along", as they say in "The Life Of Brian"; but this didn't stop him- next he fabricated a radiological warhead carrying V-2 based on the "Korsett" test stand mounting device that the A4 V-1 (first A4 prototype) slipped out of during tests when the Lox made it shrink; his theory was that the radioactive dust was kept between the Lox tank and motor; and that the externally-mounted "Korsett" strengthened the rocket's structure at this point- the end result was quite something to see- a V-2 with around 1/3 the propellant tankage of the original, and a horribly unaerodynamic sleeve wrapped around it...but Henshall gave it greater range than the original! (no doubt due to the fact that it didn't have all that pesky alcohol and Lox weighing it down.) Next thing you knew, the Korsett-equipped V-2 was right up there with manned A9/A10s and BMW "Flugelrad" flying disks in the "Nazi Wunderwaffe1946" mythology. According to my "V-Missiles of the Third Reich" book the only A9/A10 assembly bunker was authorized on October 20, 1943 under a project code-named "Zement"; it was to be located under the mountains near the town of Gmunden at Lake Traun in Austria, and comprise two multi-story galleries- "Anlage A" and "Anlage B" having a total area of 76,543 square yards underground. Pat |
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