Neuere Ergebnisse der Raketenflugtechnik. In a special issue of Flug

Vienna, 1934. Sanger, Eugen (1905-64). Neuere Ergebnisse der Raketenflugtechnik. In Flug: Zeitschr. f. d. gesamte Gebiet der Luftfahrt, Sonderheft 1 (1934). 23, [1]pp. Text illustrations. 305 x 211 mm. Original printed wrappers. Fine.

First Edition. Sanger, a Viennese rocket engineer, made the greatest early theoretical and experimental contributions to the development of the reusable space vehicle. His "Silverbird" concept, which he and his wife (the mathematician Irene Bredt) worked on during the 1930s, is a direct ancestor of today's space shuttle; it was conceived of as "a winged vehicle propelled by a rocket engine burning liquid oxygen and kerosene, capable of reaching Mach 10.0 at altitudes in excess of 100 miles" (Jenkins, Space Shuttle, p. 1). In order to realize his concept of a reusable rocket engine, Sanger had to solve the major problem of how to cool the engine; this he accomplished by designing a "regeneratively cooled" engine cooled by its own fuel circulating around the combustion chamber.

"Between 1932 and 1934, [Sanger] performed a series of pioneering experiments with reinforced cooled liquid rocket motors capable of burning mixtures of gas-oil and liquid oxygen (LOX), achieving thrust levels up to 30kp, pressures up to 50 bars, and exhaust velocities of about 3,000 m/s" (Sanger & Szames, "From the Silverbird to interstellar voyages," p. 2).

Sanger first published his ideas in his privately printed Raketenflugteknik (1933), then elaborated on them in the present paper, published in a special edition of Flug magazine. The paper contains the results of Sanger's extensive tests of various rocket engine models in 1933 and 1934, leading up to his 1935 patent for regenerative forced-flow cooling of rocket engines.

Sanger spent World War II in Germany, where he founded a rocket technology research center and worked on building his "Silverbird." After the war he emigrated to France, where he worked for the Arsenal de l'Aeronautique. In 1951 he helped to found the International Astronautical Federation, serving as its first president. In 1954 Sanger returned to Germany, where he founded a research center in Stuttgart and earned unwelcome notoriety through his involvement with Egypt's military buildup in the early 1960s. From 1963 until his death, he was a professor of astronautic technologies at the technical university in Berlin. Sanger-Bredt & Engel, "The development of regeneratively cooled liquid rocket engines in Austria and Germany, 1926-42," in Durant & James, eds., First Steps toward Space, pp. 217-46.

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