Hermann Oberth:
The Father of Spaceflight
Boris V. Rauschenbach
Clarence, New York: West-Art, 1994
Paperback, 256 pages, $15.00
Russian Academician Boris Rauschenbach's just-released biography ofGerman space pioneer Hermann Oberth is a unique contribution to theliterature of space history. In addition to having had the advantageof knowing and speaking with Oberth, Rauschenbach is himself an earlyspace pioneer, having worked at the famous Gas Dynamics Laboratorywhile a student in St. Petersburg in the 1920s.
Rauschenbach graduated from the Institute of Aviation and in 1937joined the Moscow Scientific Rocket Research Institute, where heworked with the "Russian Wernher von Braun," Sergei P. Korolev.Rauschenbach headed the development of space vehicle control systemsduring the first 10 years of the Space Age, which began in the SovietUnion with the launch of Sputnik in 1957.
New Insights
Having researched Oberth for How We Got tothe Moon: The Story of the German Space Pioneers , I wasespecially interested to see what new insights AcademicianRauschenbach could bring to the history of this remarkableman.
First, he included detailed material about the periods of Oberth'slife that are not generally described, since these are Oberth's timesof working alone, not with von Braun and the rest of the German spacepioneers. Unable to secure any financial support for his rocketexperiments, in 1930 Oberth left Germany to teach in his nativeRomania.
Rauschenbach relates that Oberth wrote popular as well as scientificarticles in the 1930s, traveled throughout Europe lecturing onspaceflight, continued very modest experiments, and evaluated theideas of other inventors. While describing a visit to Oberth by aSoviet expert trying to engage his services in the Soviet Union,Rauschenbach takes the opportunity to describe the background of theearly Soviet program, in which he participated.
Peenemünde veteran Ernst Stuhlinger, who wrote the introductionto the book, is also quoted by Rauschenbach, clarifying the detailsof the Peenemünde period in Oberth's career.
Postwar Difficulties
After World War II, the limelight shifted to theemerging U.S. and Soviet space programs and there is not much writtenon Oberth, who remained in Germany. Rauschenbach describes Oberth'sdifficulties in finding a job, his difficulties in understanding whythe space program now needed engineers and technicians (and not theirteachers), and how he occupied his creative mental powers in thelater years of his life. By the 1970s, Hermann Oberth had certainlybeen overshadowed in the United States by his popular students,particularly von Braun, but he was revered in other spacefaringcountries:
"In autumn of 1982 the Academy of Sciences of the USSR organized, inconnection with the 25th anniversary of the launch of the firstartificial satellites, a scientific conference, to which foreignscientists and astronauts were also invited. Oberth was one of thosewho received an invitation, although this was done more out of deeprespect for the patriarch of space travel than in the hope ofactually seeing him present among the guests. He was, after all, 88years old at the time.
"As everyone had expected, a sincere thank-you for the invitationcame from Germany, and the message that, because of his age and hisbad health, he could not come. How great was the astonishment of theorganizing committee, when, one day before the opening of thecongress, a telegram arrived informing them that Oberth would bemaking the trip after all."
Rauschenbach recalls that Oberth later explained why he had decidedto make the trip to Moscow: "There were two reasons for my decision:concern for the future of humanity, and a long-standing desire tovisit the homeland of my highly esteemed colleague, KonstantinTsiolkovsky, with whom I had corresponded."
Of the three pioneers of space, only Oberth lived to see the SpaceAge. From the 1950's development of the intercontinental ballisticmissile, Oberth was concerned that the rocket technology that he,Robert Goddard, and Tsiolkovsky had pioneered to open up the universeto manned exploration would be used by the two nuclear superpowersagainst the people of the Earth.
After the conference, Oberth was given a VIP tour of Russian spacefacilities, as well as the home and museum of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky.Rauschenbach's description of Oberth's trip to Russia is mostmemorable.
Hermann Oberth was a remarkable man who depended upon the integrityand creativity of his own mind to enable him to make contributions tomankind throughout his long life. Academician Rauschenbach'sbiography does full justice to its subject. Although it has beentranslated into English from German, and not the original Russian, itis a well-written, engaging, and informative book. The photodocumentation section added by the English-language editor B. JohnZavrel, who also published the book, adds a lasting image of the lifeof the father of spaceflight.
Marsha Freeman