December 28, 2005

She ain't Mookie-riffic for nothing!

For Christmas this year, daughter Rachael found a copy of the out-of-print book Retro Rockets: Experimental Rockets 1926-1941. I've already read the first half, which deals mostly with Robert Goddard and his remarkable series of liquid fueled rockets.

One tidbit that really caught my eye though was a brief discussion of German Alfred Maul, who was a civil engineer for the city of Dresden. He patented an early version of a photographic rocket in 1903 and was using an onboard gyroscope for rocket and camera stabilization by 1906. By 1912, he had developed a fully functioning recon rocket that boosted on solid fuel and took photographs from 2000 feet.

[It was] battle tested in the Turkish-Bulgarian War of 1912-1913. Anticipating today's reconnaissance satellites, it produced clear photographs of Turkish emplacements for the German-allied Bulgarian Army.

Some of these photographs still exists today.

Recon by rocket had advantages over using balloons, but the arrival of the airplane soon rendered the idea obsolete.

If you're into rockets or space technology, the Saturn Press books are excellent references.

And for some amazing modern-day rocket photography, check out Ray Dunakin's work, which I linked to here.

Posted by: Ted at 04:33 AM | category: Rocketry
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