Brits on the Moon, 1939 edition - looks like a challenge to me!

[Oggula]

I'm not quite sure whether any American on this forum can comprehend what an annoyance Scotland is for the UK. Lets compare for a moment the Scottish bid for independence in 2015 to a US state seceding from the Union! Sadly, no examples come to mind...

If Scott ever reads this, just kidding, I love your videos really!

[Oggula]

Also, on topic, off the top of my head I know the new European light lift Vega rocket is entirely solid rocket powered to save on costs. Furthermore, the new Ariane 6 will power all its stages except the last (third?) one with solid motors.

Sadly though, the Vega has only had 2 launches, and if SpaceX hopefully make reusable stages work, the cost savings from Vega will count for nothing. Ironic how completely liquid fuel now dominates the launch market.

[Temstar]

The propulsion seems precarious, but the rest quite practical.

Actually it's more likely than you think. Decades later that idea was attempted again, this time not for going to the moon quickly but to bring down launch cost by mass production. And no I don't mean the whole Sea Dragon Big Dumb Booster thing, I'm talking MASS mass production. Building common components in the hundreds of thousand or millions per year and then assembling them into rockets. Obviously you can't possibly expect to sell million of individual rockets per year, hence OTRAG:

So the idea was to develop a very simple Common Rocket Propulsion Unit which could be bundled in different quantities to produce any sized booster you want. The CRPU would be so simple as to be built out of ordinary steel, pressure feed so no expensive turbopumps, ablatively cooled engine rather than the more elaborate regeneratively cooling, no gimbling (steering the whole rocket will be done via varying the thrust of CRPUs on different sides of the booster) and flat bulkheads rather than the complex domed bulkheads of bigger rockets. Since each individual CRPU is simple and a single complete rocket will require a large number of them, the CRPU factories will be expected to mass produce a huge number of CRPU per year. Mass production of simple machines on this scale has been proven to drive down cost and increase reliability (eg, Merlin engine production during WW2) so OTRAG rockets are projected to reduce launch vehicle cost by a factor of ten compared to conventional rockets. The unit cost of CRPUs will be so cheap that recovering them for reuse will be pointless as the cost of recovery and refurbishment will be greater than just building a new CRPU.

The idea was so revolutionary that OTRAG (which was a German company) managed to get Wernher von Braun interested and he became their scientific adviser. Von Braun however came to the company with a warning that rocketry is inherently a political process and he did not believe Germany provided a stable enough political environment for rocket development.

Technical wise the project proved to be quite workable and OTRAG managed 14 suborbital launches with a four CRPU sounding rocket design. But the politics got in the way. The USSR and France were not interested in Germany achieving an indigenous long-range rocket activity. American rocket makers were not interested in having a low-cost competitor. A propaganda campaign began, alleging OTRAG was a cover for German and South African nuclear cruise missile development. Crude Soviet-source disinformation was eagerly picked up and given credibility by the American mainstream media. The government of the Congo (were OTRAG's testing facility was located) was pressured by the Russians to withdraw permission to use the site. OTRAG left the country in April 1979. OTRAG moved their testing to Libya but in 1983 the Libyan Government unlawfully confiscated all of OTRAG's rocket manufacturing and test equipment in the country for their own end and never returned them despite personal promises by Gaddafi. The company gave up and shutdown after those two set backs.

[ShaftamusPrime]

English I think, from Wales. Although that accent... there must be some Irish blood in him!

(any Brits I left out insulting?)

I'm pretty sure Manley is Scottish since the header on his youtube channel says Scotsman. I could very much be wrong though.

[wbcundiff]

I'm not quite sure whether any American on this forum can comprehend what an annoyance Scotland is for the UK. Lets compare for a moment the Scottish bid for independence in 2015 to a US state seceding from the Union! Sadly, no examples come to mind...

Americans and secession. hmmm. well there were petitions filed at the white house recently for secession from each of our 50 states and they got enough signatures for an official response from the president. oH! and there was that thing....ummmm. it was our single bloodiest war...crap I'll think of it. and there are these people.

[AntonioAJC]

Yeah, baby! I really don't know where Scott Manley (Scottish?) came from but I think he has an accent from somewhere in the UK.

[NGTOne]

-SNIP-

OTRAG was a brilliant idea tragically killed by its times. You don't start a private spaceflight project during the Cold War.

[rpayne88]

Why is my computer not quoting?

ShaftamusPrime, I believe he is American. IIRC, he laid out a cluster of SRBs that, when viewed from the top, made the logo for the San Francisco 49'ers. Also, IIRC, he stated in one of his videos ( the one where he used the "Edgar Allen" space plane to launch the "Poe" space probe in response to the Baltimore Ravens winning the superbowl) that HIS team had lost. I may be wrong, but that logically seems to be indicitive of an American, but hey, he may just be interested in the sport from abroad.

[samstarman5]

Fantastic! We can laugh at some of the visions mankind had 75 years ago about going to space, but predicting the future is hard... Arthur Clarke wrote wonderful stories about geostationary space stations used for communications. There'd be three stations, to cover the entire globe, manned with hundreds of technicians... He was right about the orbits... just not about the kind of sattelites that would utilize them. And how many science fiction stories written until the mid 50's wouldn't contain glorious sentences like "we have to calculate another hyperjump. Where's my slide ruler!?"

Omissions like the design of a space suit... to be honest, it doesn't seem like a big deal until you actually try one out and discover the constant volume problem. But who'd do that in the 1940s? The same goes for artificial gravity through a centrifuge design. We now know that the solution is worse than the problem, but it's easy to judge in hindsight.

I'm amazed at the detail that went into the article, and at the serious attempt that was taken to come up with feasible solutions to various technical challenges. Nowadays we don't get any further than fancy CGI and "magic technology" that will solve certain problems, usually in complete disregard of what is known of physics.

You might want to read up on the British Interplanetary Society and the actual work they have done towards real designs that are considered today to be feasible before you compare them to movie studios that could care less about incorporating actual science into their stories.

[Toastie_Buns]

This is glorious. It's like looking at an entire building lifting itself from the ground.

Damn the part count, I want this.

[cypher_00]

I seem to remember that Scot is originally from Scotland but now lives in the US because he works at a company in Silicon Valley.

[Kerbart]

You might want to read up on the British Interplanetary Society and the actual work they have done towards real designs that are considered today to be feasible before you compare them to movie studios that could care less about incorporating actual science into their stories.

Pray tell me, which of the following phrases is comparing the work BIS did to bad SF movies:

• But predicting the future is hard [so I'm not blaming them for making the wrong guesses about things they had no knowledge of]
  
• Omissions like the design of a space suit [...] until you actually try one and discover the constant volume problem [so I'm not blaming them for not having a space suit design included in the article]
  
• I'm amazed at the detail that went into the article, and the serious attempt that was taken to come up with feasible solutions to various technical challenges [ok. This one really bugs me. HTF can you interpret this admiration of the work the BIS did as a comparison to movie studios. Other than "they did much better than that"]

Did you actually read what I wrote? Or did your "Ctrl+F movie studio" just trigger a blind response? Because I'm really puzzled why you are writing this bizarre response when, what I really wrote, was what a good job the BIS did.

READING. R-E-A-D-I-N-G. You should try it one day.