The Men Behind the Space Rockets (1955) (1st ed.)

S$58.00

The Men Behind the Space Rockets (1955) (1st ed.)

S$58.00

Title: The Men Behind the Space Rockets

Author: Heinz Gartmann

Publisher: Widenfeld and Nicolson, 1955. First edition.

Condition: Hardcover, with dust jacket. Good. Wear to dust jacket, with a large tear to the back of dust jacketSlight foxing to book and slight soiling to edges, binding tight and text unmarked. With black-and-white photographic plates. 185pp., app 8″ by 5″.

From jacket flap:

The age of space travel is almost upon us. Already there lies behind the development of modern rockets a long, fascinating history of design and experiment. Heinz Gartmann, the well-known German expert on rocket research, has played his part in it. In this book he describes the lives and work of his fellow scientists who have devoted themselves to the great ideal of the conquest of space, in the years when it has been still but a dream. When in the future people look back on the vast expansion of the human world which interplanetary space travel will have brought, they will recognize as the great pioneers: Hermann Ganswindt, the disregarded fanatic who produced the first realistic plan for a space ship; Tsiolkovski, the obscure Russian schoolmaster who bequeathed his research work to the Communist Party; Robert Hutchins Goddard, the publicity-shy American professor who designed the first liquid propellant rocket; Herman Oberth, the “Grand Old Man” of German rocket research who is now at work in America; and perhaps the most brilliant of all, Wehrner von Braun, the youthful chief designer of the V2, whose greatest achievements are probably still in the future. In a final chapter Heinz Gartmann surveys the future prospect of rocket development.