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STS 497I: Space Colonization
Spring 2001

1/19/01

Student responses to Sid Goldstein's talk last week

Class Website
=> review assembled list of space colonization web pages
   - categorize your group's site according to SCI model:
      public, industry, university (education), government
   - use subcategories if appropriate (eg. public/political
      or public/interest group)

Next week's videocon with Frank Drake, 1:00-2:00pm
   - Host/Moderator: Group 1
=> email interview questions to Group 1 by Wed., 4:00pm
   - Group 1 will organize questions and distribute by Thursday

Video: Thunder in the Skies (from the Space Flight series)
=> Write 1-2 paragraph synopsis of video, what did you learn?
=> Email to Chris by next Wed.

- Sputnik launch - Oct. 1957, "America's technological Pearl Harbor"
- Constantine Tsiakowski (  ) points to the rocket as the key
- Robert Goddard (  ) first rocket flight in 1926
- Charles Lindberg raises financial support for Goddard's work
- Herman Obert - ~1923, German rocket society
               -  1928 film (the woman of the Moon) stirred
                     German interest
- Dornberger      
- Kroffe Ericke
- Werner von Braun (-1976), student of Dornberger
- Depression slows financial support
- Hitler's power grows, German rocketry continues to grow
- First successful launch in 1943 - "the rocket as a weapon of war"
- First use of (V2/vengeance weapon #2) in fall of 1944
- Germans mass produce the V2 using concentration camp inmates but
   too late to help Hitler succeed
- May 1945, Dornberger and von Braun surrender to Americans;
   Dornberger tried of war crimes but not found guilty
- von Braun's team invited to bring V2 technology to the US.
   Set up work in New Mexico
- Edwards Air Force base used early on as a bombing range, later to
   test jets (rocket airplanes)
- X-1 airplane revolutionizes U.S. aerospace, built to break the
   sound barrier, flown by Chuck Yeager in 19??, deemed "classified"
   immediately after first flight
- Mach 2 achieved in 19??, Mach 3 achieved in Sept. 1956
- McCarthy era drives U.S. military development of rockets; plans
   include rocket delivery of nuclear warheads from earth orbit
- U.S. stunned by Russian launch of Sputnik
- Project Vanguard is humiliated

- How had Russian moved ahead of U.S.?
   Sergei Kolov pioneered rocketry development in Russia
- Public response compels President Eisenhower to create new space
   agency but needed to be a civilian agency rather than military
- Project Mercury - designed to get humans into space fastest,
   "man in a can" approach, 7 Mercury astronauts selected
- NASA and Life magazine portray Mercury astronauts as American heroes
- X-15 airplane - "most successful research airplane ever flown"
- Neil Armstrong, one of the X-15 civilian pilots
- Chuck Yeager agrees to head up Airforce pilot school

=> Writing Assignment #1, Read "The Discovers" Book II.


Credits:
Minutes courtesy Dr. Lisa Brown (Pennsylvania Space Grant Consortium)
Kindly typed in by Dr. Jane Charlton (Penn State Astronomy)


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