Journey into Space

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The youngsters have already zoomed confidently off into the vast ocean of space; they can buy space suits, space guns and rockets in almost any toyshop. In 50-odd science fiction magazines, space travel is a favorite theme. Eight comic strips and at least two TV programs are flying through space. "Scientific" space books are brisk sellers. But not all members of the space cult are storytellers, crackpots or kids. Some serious scientists believe that space flight will surely come, and perhaps soon, but they know that separating facts and fancy about space travel is almost as difficult as a trip to the moon.

The basic principles were worked out long before World War I, but the popular vogue probably grew out of two great technical achievements of World War II. Nuclear fission convinced the public that "science can do anything." The German V-2 rocket proved that a man-made vehicle can climb briefly into space. The head of the V-2 project, Dr. Wernher von Braun, is still only 40 and is the major prophet and hero (or wild propagandist, some scientists suspect) of space travel. As a boy, Dr. von Braun wanted to go to the moon. He still does.

Like Columbus? The cold war has thrown a blackout over all rocket research. The real rocket experts, working on guided missiles, are therefore sworn to secrecy. Not one man on earth who knows the latest developments can talk freely about them. Men who do not know can let their fancies run wild, for they have no fear of expert contradiction.

Space enthusiasts like to compare the present with the time just before Columbus, when Europeans were about ready to launch out over the Atlantic. The analogy is poor. Columbus did not know what he would find on the other side of the ocean, but he had ships that would take him across. The space men can see across their "ocean," but they have no ships.

Up from Gravity. The best way to visualize space in terms of astronavigation is to think of it as a placid lake with a few widely separated whirlpools in its mirror surface. These sucking danger spots are the gravitational fields around the sun and its satellites. The cardinal principle of astronavigation is to keep far away from gravitational maelstroms. Unfortunately for the space men, their ships must set sail from the middle of one: the strong gravitational field that surrounds the earth.

The energy needed to escape from the earth's suction is simple for astronauts to figure. Expressed as speed, it is 25,000 m.p.h. A space ship with this "escape velocity" would be an independent part of the solar system and could cruise, with a little more energy, all over the place.

Twenty-five thousand miles an hour is more speed than a single rocket can make, but long before World War II, the space men thought of a trick: the multi-stage rocket. This is a "beast"* that shoots upward with a smaller beast attached to its nose. When the fuel of the mother rocket is gone, the second rocket fires and begins its flight. It is already moving fast, so the energy in its own fuel gives it greater speed than a single-stage rocket. A three-stage rocket will do even better.