Hermann Oberth

Oberth (in front) with fellow ABMA employees. Left to right: Dr. Ernst Stuhlinger, Major General Holger Toftoy, Oberth, Dr. Wernher von Braun, and Dr. Robert Lusser.

Hermann Julius Oberth (June 25, 1894 – December 28, 1989) was an Austro-Hungarian-born, German and Romanian physicist, and, along with the Russian Konstantin Tsiolkovsky and the American Robert Goddard, one of the founding fathers of rocketry and astronautics. The three were never active collaborators: instead, their parallel achievements occurred independently of one another.

Early life

Oberth was born to a Saxon family in the city of Schäßburg (present-day Sighişoara), in Transylvania. On Oberth's tenth birthday, he was given a telescope, and this gift triggered some speculation on his part as to how one might travel to the moon. In high school, Oberth became fascinated with the field in which he was to make his mark through the writings of Jules Verne, especially From the Earth to the Moon and Around the Moon, re-reading them to the point of memorization. Influenced by Verne's books and ideas, Oberth constructed his first model rocket at age 14. In his youthful experiments, he arrived independently at the concept of the multistage rocket, but lacked the resources to pursue his idea on any but a theoretical level. He did, however, make calculations demonstrating that the canon that launches the characters of Jules Verne's novel into space would kill its passengers because of the high acceleration necessary to escape the earth's pull. Oberth then suggested that a rocket could be used to make escape from terrestrial gravity a non-lethal event.

In spite of the distractions that his investigations into rocketry created, Oberth continued his studies, and passed his final exams with accolades, graduating in 1912.

Later that same year, Oberth undertook the study of medicine in Munich but at the outbreak of World War I he was drafted in an Imperial German infantry battalion and sent to the Eastern Front; in 1915 he was wounded, and moved for treatment to a medical unit in his hometown. Here he initially conducted a series of experiments concerning weightlessness and later resumed his rocket designs. In 1917, he showed designs of a missile using liquid propellant with a range of 180 miles to Hermann von Stein, the Prussian Minister of War.

On July 6, 1918 he married Mathilde Hummel, with whom he had four children, among them a son who died at the front during World War II, and a daughter who also died during the war, when a liquid oxygen plant exploded in a workplace accident in August 1944. In 1919 he moved once again to Germany, this time to study physics, initially in Munich and later in Göttingen, Heidelberg and Klausenburg in Transylvania.

His 1922 doctoral dissertation on rocket science was at first rejected. Phillip Lenard, the Nobel laureate, felt that the work was excellent, but too interdisciplinary to qualify as a physics dissertation. Another scientist likewise praised it, but could not accept it as an astronomical work. Oberth commented later that he made the deliberate choice not to write another doctoral dissertation: "I refrained from writing another one, thinking to myself: Never mind, I will prove that I am able to become a greater scientist than some of you, even without the title of doctor." He criticized the German system of education, saying "Our educational system is like an automobile which has strong rear lights, brightly illuminating the past. But looking forward things are barely discernible." Oberth submitted the paper to qualify for a teaching degree, and was finally awarded with the title of doctor in physics by professor Augustin Maior, at Babeş-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca (Romania), on May 23, 1923. Oberth finally had the 92-page thesis privately published as the controversial Die Rakete zu den Planetenräumen ("By Rocket into Planetary Space") at the end of 1923; in 1929, Oberth would expand this to a 429-page work entitled Wege zur Raumschiffahrt ("Ways to Spaceflight"). By Rocket into Planetary Space became an immensely popular work that influenced the future of rocketry and catapulted a vision of space travel into the public imagination. In this work, Oberth discusses the benefits of liquid fuel rocketry, and introduces such conventions as space suits, space stations and even a space telescope.

In 1924, Oberth found a teaching position at a high school in Transylvania.

Three years later, some enthusiasts that had taken great inspiration from Oberth's book established an amateur rocket group called the Verein für Raumschiffahrt (VfR - "Spaceflight Society").

Oberth joined the group, and acted as something of a mentor to its members. For several years before his final departure from Romania in 1938, Oberth taught physics and mathematics at the Stephan Ludwig Roth High School in Mediaş.

Rocketry and space flight

File:Oberth hermannstadt.jpg

The statue of Hermann Oberth in front of Sibiu city hall

In 1928 and 1929 Oberth worked in Berlin as scientific consultant on the first film ever to have scenes set in space, Frau im Mond ("The Woman in the Moon"), directed at Universum Film AG by Fritz Lang. The film was of enormous value in popularizing the idea of rocket science. Oberth's main task was to build and launch a rocket as a publicity event prior to the film's premiere. On June 5, 1929, Oberth won the first REP-Hirsch Prize of the French Astronomical Society for his Encouragement of Astronautics in his book Wege zur Raumschiffahrt (Ways to Spaceflight) that expanded Die Rakete zu den Planetenräumen to a full-length book.

In autumn 1929, Oberth launched his first liquid fuel rocket, named Kegeldüse. He was helped in this experiment by his students at the Technical University of Berlin, one of whom was Wernher von Braun, who would later head the wartime project to develop the rocket officially called the A4, but far better known today as the V-2 rocket.

In 1938 the Oberth family left Sibiu for good, to settle first in Nazi Germany. Oberth himself moved on first to the Technische Hochschule in Vienna, then the Technische Hochschule in Dresden. Oberth arrived at Peenemünde in 1941 to work on the V-2 and circa September 1943, was awarded the Kriegsverdienstkreuz I Klasse mit Schwertern (War Merit Cross 1st Class, with Swords) for his "outstanding, courageous behavior … during the attack" of Peenemünde by Operation Hydra. Oberth later worked on solid-propellant anti-aircraft rockets at the WASAG complex near Wittenberg. At the end of the war the Oberth family moved to Feucht, near Nuremberg. Oberth left for Switzerland in 1948, where he worked as an independent consultant and a writer.

In 1950 he went on to Italy where, he completed the work he had begun at WASAG for the Italian Navy. In 1953 he returned to Feucht to publish his book Menschen im Weltraum (Man in Space), in which he described his ideas for a space-based reflecting telescope, a space station, an electric spaceship, and space suits.

In the 1950s, Oberth offered his opinions regarding unidentified flying objects; he was a supporter of the extraterrestrial hypothesis.

Oberth eventually came to work for his ex-student von Braun, developing space rockets in Huntsville, Alabama in the United States (see also List of German rocket scientists in the United States). Among other things, Oberth was involved in writing a study, The Development of Space Technology in the Next Ten Years. In 1958 Hermann was back in Feucht, a where he published his ideas on a lunar exploration vehicle, a "lunar catapult," and on "muffled" helicopters and airplanes. In 1960, in the United States again, he went to work for Convair as a technical consultant on the Atlas rocket.

Later life

Hermann Oberth retired in 1962 at the age of 68. From 1965 to 1967 he was a member of the far right National Democratic Party. In July 1969, he returned to the US to witness the launch of the Saturn V rocket that carried the Apollo 11 crew on the first landing mission to the Moon.

The 1973 energy crisis inspired Oberth to look at alternative energy sources, including a plan for a wind power station that could utilize the jet stream. However, his main interest in retirement was to turn to more abstract philosophical questions. Most notable among his several books from this period is Primer For Those Who Would Govern.

Oberth died in Nuremberg, on December 28, 1989.

Legacy

Oberth is memorialized by the Hermann Oberth Space Travel Museum in Feucht, and by the Hermann Oberth Society, which brings together scientists, researchers and astronauts from East and West in order to carry on his work in rocketry and space exploration.

Named after Oberth

• Also, a crater on the Moon was named after him.

• The Oberth effect is named after him.

Books

• The Moon Car (1959)
• The Electric Spaceship (1960)
• Ways to Spaceflight (1929)
• Primer for Those Who Would Govern (1987) ISBN 0-914301-06-3

See also

• Robert H. Goddard
• Rocket
• Wernher Von Braun

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Walters, Helen B. 1962. Hermann Oberth : Father of Space Travel. New York, NY: Macmillan. ASIN B0007E0GBW.
• Rauschenbach, Boris V. 1994. Hermann Oberth: The Father of Space Flight 1894-1989. West Art Pub. ISBN 0914301144.
• Ordway, Frederick I., III. 1979. The Rocket Team. New York, NY: Thomas Y. Crowell, Publishers. ISBN 043455300X.
• Wegener, Peter P. 1996. The Peenemünde wind tunnels a memoir. New Haven: Yale University Press. 36-39. ISBN 0300063679.

External links

• The Hermann Oberth Space Museum. Retrieved October 9, 2007.
• Statements About Flying Saucers and Extraterrestrial Life Made by Hermann Oberth. Retrieved October 9, 2007.

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