Customer Reviews

The Problem of Space Travel : The Rocket Motor (The Nasa History Series)

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This book, written by Hermann Noordung in 1929, was first published in German. Many years later, it was translated into English and published by NASA in 1995. Its NASA designation is NASA SP-4026. Some readers may find this book very difficult to read, since it contains engineering formulae and assumes the reader knows some basic scientific principles. Furthermore, all the figures are labeled in German and only contain English translations in the Figure title blocks.

While the title of the book indicates that it focuses on the rocket engine, only a modest portion of the book actually deals with the rocket motor and most of the book is dedicated to presenting the current knowledge and theories (in 1929) on space travel. The book opens with discussing gravitational attraction and the difficulty in escaping Earth's gravity field. The book then leads into the physics of the rocket motor and different types of the launch vehicle configurations, such as balloon assisted launches, rocket planes and multi-stage rockets. After these opening sections, the books contains numerous paragraphs on space based research and construction. For example, the author examines space station, the potential effect of weightlessness on the human body, space science, airlock designs, solar power and many other topics that are still being debated today. Even spaced based weapon designs were shown.

As a technical person, I found this book to be very interesting. I was amazed so see that many of the problems associated with space travel were addressed and conceptual designs were presented in the 1920's. Some of these concepts were ultimately incorporated into our nation's space vehicles. For example, the design for the NASA's International Space Station Airlock bears a striking resemblance to the Noordung's Space Station Airlock shown in his book. On the flip side, reentry heating was only given a very modest overview, even though this effect had proven to be one the most difficult problems to solve for the Space Shuttle.

While I thoroughly enjoyed this book, I feel that those readers who do not have a technical or scientific background may find this book overwhelming.