Manned Rockets

Through the roaring twenty, dare devils were the form of new entertainment, but one man in particular stands out: Fritz von Opel. Opel is famous for sticking simple rocket powered engines on the back of vehicles, such as rocket powered cars and boats. Later he would go on to attempt to use a rocket engine to fly. The history of manned rocket flight started with the Lippisch Ente, in 1928. This was just a simple sail plane, fitted with 2 solid fuels, black powder rocket engines, similar to bottle rockets. There were only two attempts at flying this vehicle, both of which failed, with the last test flight burning the vehicle up.

But this failure didn’t stop Opel. The following year, he had his team design yet another rocket plane, known as the Opel RAK-1. The first public test launch of this vehicle was on September 30, 1929, when the RAK-1 made its first public flight. Recent failures with the Ente scared the government, into nearly canceling the event, fortunately a compromise was reached, where the flight could be done, but in a more sparsely populated area. At 9am September 30, 1929, Opel attempted the first launch of the RAK-1, but the catapult system failed to launch the craft, making nothing but a giant cloud of smoke. 11 am Opel tried again, becoming the first human to ride in a rocket powered vehicle.

It would be Herman Oberth, known as the father of rocketry, who would take rocketry, something that was only used by dare devils, and develop the theories that would make space travel possible. These included coming up with designs and theories for space stations and rockets.

During the filming of” Frau im Mond” (Woman in the Moon), in 1925, the rocket in the film, known as “Friede” was designed by Oberth himself. He was also contracted to build a real model of a liquid fuel rocket for the movie which he tried but failed to finish. This led to so much embarrassment that Oberth left Munich and nearly gave up on rocketry.