To A Distant Day

The Rocket Pioneers

Chris Gainor, Central, 621.4536 G142t 2008

A few pages of sources, but no direct citations. Interesting, but little that isn't better presented in other sources.

• p19 27yo scientist Nikolai Kibalchich made bomb used by Narodnaya Volya to assassinate Tsar Alexander II on March 1, 1881. Wrote paper on rocket-propelled aircraft in prison before his execution. Letter suppressed by government until Bolshevik revolution sanctified him.

• p40 about Robert Goddard biographies: Pendray (1961) claims Goddard was stung by NYT 1920 derision, Clary (2003) claims Goddard took bad press in stride, attempted to educate reporters.

• p108 Korolev arrested in 1938, labor camps and then NKVD special prison for scientists sharsashka Central Design Bureau KB-29, working with Tupolev and Glushko in September 1940

• p146 photo of R7 rocket at Tyura Tam launch pad November 3 1947, with Sputnik 2 and Laika. The strapons made the R7 too large for missile silos.
• p191 H. Julian Allen at Ames "in the early 1950s" about sharp-nosed rockets: "Half the heat generated by friction was going into the missiles. I reasoned we had to deflect the heat into the air and let it dissipate. Therefore streamlined shapes were the worst possible; they had to be blunt." In 1952, Allen and his team found ...