Reaching for the Stars
An Alternate Space Race
(Roundel of the League of Nations, post-Second Covenant)
It was the dawn of a new age on Earth. The three remaining great powers, the victorious allies of the Second World War, had drawn up a permanent treaty of friendship and international governance, turning the League of Nations into a true law of peoples. Beating swords into ploughshares, they now turned their attention to the skies above: this new age would be the age of rockets.
The origins of space exploration can be traced to before the two world wars. All the great powers had their pioneers, but perhaps the greatest was Konstanin Tsiolkovsky of Russia, who had worked out most of the fundamental theories before the First World War. Aviation was the big thing however, and Tsiolkovsky’s equations lay unnoticed for some time. In the interwar years, rocketry grew in popularity, as clubs and universities launched sounding rockets to probe the upper atmosphere, much as had the balloonists of the Belle Epoque. In America, Robert Goddard, a keen follower of Tsiolkovsky’s work, launched the first liquid-fueled rocket in 1921. His claims that such a rocket could one day reach the moon were met with mockery by a Times editorial, but some knew better. Tapped to head the Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory at CalTech, Goddard quickly gathered to him a group of fellow rocket aficionados.
A similar situation developed in Germany, with young scientists and engineers like Irene Bredt and Adolf Thiel working with the renowned expatriate aerodynamicist Theodore von Karman at RWTH Aachen; together they founded the Verein für Raumschiffahrt, the Spaceflight Society. They were quickly launching sounding rockets of their own, helped by the philanthropy of the Kaiser and of the Lilienthal-Junkers Foundation (and its close ties to the often-ruling SPD).
In Tsiolkovsky’s native Russia, blue-sky research took a backseat to rearmament. Indeed Tsiolkovsky himself was forced into exile as the crackdown on the RSDLP and the SRs (or anyone who sounded the least bit like a socialist) intensified after the First World War. Many later-famous scientists and engineers would share his fate, escaping before the Second World War; an expatriate community of rocketeers formed around Tsiolkovsky in Britain. Across the channel, France, Russia’s First World War ally and partner in defeat, was itself all too busy rebuilding. The other second tier powers--Japan, Italy, the Ottomans--made their own experiments, but they too had their own problems. The British Empire was no second-tier power, but did not claim any firsts in rocketry in the interwar period--indeed British law, dating to 1875, precluded the private launching of liquid-fueled rockets, so the British Interplanetary Society, founded soon after the VfR, and counting both native Britons and expatriate Russians in its number, could only dream, not build. The British made a different contribution to high speed flight: the jet engine. While the invention soon spread, throughout the Second World War British jets would remain the best in the world, a great advantage for the Allied cause.
The ground was well-laid for an explosion in rocketry; theory, experiments, technology from other fields. All that was needed was a spark. The Second World War provided that spark. Both continental opponents--the German Empire and the Russian Empire--poured massive sums of money into their rocketry programs. The German goal was simple: develop a missile that could hit Petrograd from launch sites in East Prussia, and later (after its loss) from central Germany. Russian research, given the strength of Russian panzer armies, was focused more narrowly, primarily on smaller tactical military rockets--rocket artillery and SRBMs designed to pierce German and British air defenses. In the United States, rocketry also saw much interest, both for research and for war. Missiles seemed the only hope of staving off the Russian Bear in the early, dark days of the war--if Germany were overrun and metropolitan Britain cowed, only a radical new weapon, the nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missile, could give America the chance of victory. If things went better, as they eventually did, then the Army and the Air Force could use shorter-ranged missiles that could overfly and avoid Russian air defenses and provide standoff capability for carrier-launched aircraft. As the Russians were gradually pushed back and eventually forced into surrender, the Allies scrambled to pick over the pieces of Russian technology. The Russians had advanced far with solid fuels--necessary for convenient battlefield usage--and these were quickly tested and copied. But solid fuels alone would not yield the stars.
In Russia, the Left SR-RSDLP coalition that took power after the final collapse of the Tsarist regime was far too busy rebuilding to focus on any kind of space race. But a race there was. First, it was just a resumption of the interwar competition to see who could launch the most advanced, highest-and-fastest-flying sounding rocket or aircraft. But soon it intensified. The Americans, British, and Germans had just signed the first attempt at a permanent, empowered international order--the famous Second Covenant of the League of Nations--and had forsworn all war under its auspices. Antagonism was dead, rockets needed new use, but nationalism was still alive. And German SRBMs had kissed the edge of space on their way to Petrograd.
German Armbrust (Crossbow) SRBM, range 500km, warload 1 ton.
See also: Postwar range test with late-war improvements.
An Alternate Space Race
(Roundel of the League of Nations, post-Second Covenant)
It was the dawn of a new age on Earth. The three remaining great powers, the victorious allies of the Second World War, had drawn up a permanent treaty of friendship and international governance, turning the League of Nations into a true law of peoples. Beating swords into ploughshares, they now turned their attention to the skies above: this new age would be the age of rockets.
The origins of space exploration can be traced to before the two world wars. All the great powers had their pioneers, but perhaps the greatest was Konstanin Tsiolkovsky of Russia, who had worked out most of the fundamental theories before the First World War. Aviation was the big thing however, and Tsiolkovsky’s equations lay unnoticed for some time. In the interwar years, rocketry grew in popularity, as clubs and universities launched sounding rockets to probe the upper atmosphere, much as had the balloonists of the Belle Epoque. In America, Robert Goddard, a keen follower of Tsiolkovsky’s work, launched the first liquid-fueled rocket in 1921. His claims that such a rocket could one day reach the moon were met with mockery by a Times editorial, but some knew better. Tapped to head the Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory at CalTech, Goddard quickly gathered to him a group of fellow rocket aficionados.
A similar situation developed in Germany, with young scientists and engineers like Irene Bredt and Adolf Thiel working with the renowned expatriate aerodynamicist Theodore von Karman at RWTH Aachen; together they founded the Verein für Raumschiffahrt, the Spaceflight Society. They were quickly launching sounding rockets of their own, helped by the philanthropy of the Kaiser and of the Lilienthal-Junkers Foundation (and its close ties to the often-ruling SPD).
In Tsiolkovsky’s native Russia, blue-sky research took a backseat to rearmament. Indeed Tsiolkovsky himself was forced into exile as the crackdown on the RSDLP and the SRs (or anyone who sounded the least bit like a socialist) intensified after the First World War. Many later-famous scientists and engineers would share his fate, escaping before the Second World War; an expatriate community of rocketeers formed around Tsiolkovsky in Britain. Across the channel, France, Russia’s First World War ally and partner in defeat, was itself all too busy rebuilding. The other second tier powers--Japan, Italy, the Ottomans--made their own experiments, but they too had their own problems. The British Empire was no second-tier power, but did not claim any firsts in rocketry in the interwar period--indeed British law, dating to 1875, precluded the private launching of liquid-fueled rockets, so the British Interplanetary Society, founded soon after the VfR, and counting both native Britons and expatriate Russians in its number, could only dream, not build. The British made a different contribution to high speed flight: the jet engine. While the invention soon spread, throughout the Second World War British jets would remain the best in the world, a great advantage for the Allied cause.
The ground was well-laid for an explosion in rocketry; theory, experiments, technology from other fields. All that was needed was a spark. The Second World War provided that spark. Both continental opponents--the German Empire and the Russian Empire--poured massive sums of money into their rocketry programs. The German goal was simple: develop a missile that could hit Petrograd from launch sites in East Prussia, and later (after its loss) from central Germany. Russian research, given the strength of Russian panzer armies, was focused more narrowly, primarily on smaller tactical military rockets--rocket artillery and SRBMs designed to pierce German and British air defenses. In the United States, rocketry also saw much interest, both for research and for war. Missiles seemed the only hope of staving off the Russian Bear in the early, dark days of the war--if Germany were overrun and metropolitan Britain cowed, only a radical new weapon, the nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missile, could give America the chance of victory. If things went better, as they eventually did, then the Army and the Air Force could use shorter-ranged missiles that could overfly and avoid Russian air defenses and provide standoff capability for carrier-launched aircraft. As the Russians were gradually pushed back and eventually forced into surrender, the Allies scrambled to pick over the pieces of Russian technology. The Russians had advanced far with solid fuels--necessary for convenient battlefield usage--and these were quickly tested and copied. But solid fuels alone would not yield the stars.
In Russia, the Left SR-RSDLP coalition that took power after the final collapse of the Tsarist regime was far too busy rebuilding to focus on any kind of space race. But a race there was. First, it was just a resumption of the interwar competition to see who could launch the most advanced, highest-and-fastest-flying sounding rocket or aircraft. But soon it intensified. The Americans, British, and Germans had just signed the first attempt at a permanent, empowered international order--the famous Second Covenant of the League of Nations--and had forsworn all war under its auspices. Antagonism was dead, rockets needed new use, but nationalism was still alive. And German SRBMs had kissed the edge of space on their way to Petrograd.
German Armbrust (Crossbow) SRBM, range 500km, warload 1 ton.
See also: Postwar range test with late-war improvements.
