A rocket containing parts of a German V-2 is launched by Cape Canaveral on July 24, 1950. Credit: NASA
While the Second World War approached, the allies were anxious to get their hands on one of the most extraordinary but terrifying weapons in Nazi Germany’s armor: the V-2 rocket. A long-haul and liquid supersonic guided missile, the V-2 could transport a 2,000 pound header (910 kilograms) to 200 miles (320 kilometers) from its launch site.
And, a British proposal from 1946, perhaps it could also provide the vehicle necessary to put a man in space.
The allies acquire the V-2
The V in the name of the V-2 represents Virgeltungswaffenwhich translates into “weapon of revenge”. The V-2 was a more advanced and more destructive successor than the V-1 flying bomb. During the war, the Nazis built more than 5,000 V-2 rockets through the efforts of forced workers, using them with great effectiveness against the objectives in England and Europe.
At the beginning of 1945, American forces beat the red army in the V-2 German site, known as Mittlewerk, confiscating the wealth of hardware they found. The American army eventually transported a surprising 300 railway cars full of V-2 parts and related equipment outside occupied Germany and sent them to New Mexico, where she was studied in detail and put in use. This hardware, which was estimated as sufficient to build 100 V-2, has significantly informed the development of the first American crew missile programs, helped by many captured Nazi rocket scientists.
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The British, in comparison, were able to get their hands only on a relatively small number of part-abstains to build a number to a figure of V-2. However, they were anxious to exploit these booty of war and save years of work by developing their ballistic missiles. At the end of 1945, the British had learned enough to test the fire three rockets V-2 as part of a project called Operation Backfire, two of which flew successfully.
From the missile to the spaceship
The V-2 could, without a doubt, fly high enough to enter space (currently defined as an altitude greater than about 62 miles [100 km]Also known as the Kámán line). But the power to put an object in orbit around the earth was missing. However, the V-2 could make a parabolic mission fly into space. In fact, British researchers had noticed that the V-2 rocket was large enough to transport a man to a small capsule.
By putting these two facts together, the British researcher that Ross has understood that a modified V-2 could put a human being in space. There, considerable research could also be carried out on a mission with a suborbital and ballistic trajectory – as in the end the first two missions of the American project Mercury.
In 1946, the member of the British Interplanetary Society Ralph Smith presented a proposal for a enhanced and updated V-2, defined as megaroc (abbreviation of “mega-rash”). Smith’s megaroc would bring a human being inside a small capsule instead of a head. His goal was that the capsule reached an altitude of 186 miles (300 km). Smith’s megaroc was a more muscle version of the V-2, with added structural reinforcements and an increase in the diameter of the hull. Megaroc was missing the iconic fins of the V-2, since it was stabilized and did not need it, which also spared weight.
The capsule that would have been perched on top of Megaroc could contain a single occupant. Equipped with radio and scientific tools, its orientation has been designed to be adjustable through the use of peroxide engines (which have been used by subsequent space vehicles). He would have offered incredible views through one or two windows to what could have been the first human to see the land from space.
The Booster and the megaroc capsule would have returned to Earth through the parachute. The capsule itself had no heat shield, since the parachute had to take sides at high altitude for use to the end (unlike the parachutes that opened late in the profile of the mission and were used by Mercurio, Gemini and Apollo projects).
In advance of the time
Unfortunately, it has never been. Great Britain, although victorious at the end of the war, was still almost failure. In addition, the use of atomic bombs on Japan in 1945 had made the acquisition of such a weapon a key priority for the government of the United Kingdom, with further funds diverted to the development of long -haul bombers to transport. There was simply enough financing or appetite to go on with such an ambitious plan to put a human being in space.
Yet it is worth underlining how incredibly far -sighted was the 1946 Megaroc proposal. It would not have been until April 1961 that the Soviet pilot Yuri Gagarin piloted the first human mission in orbit, with the American Alan Shepard who completed the first flight of suborbital mercury a month later. If the British government had financed Megaroc, the first human spatial flight in human history could have occurred in the early 1950s, an entire decade before it actually took place.
Although it is the rocket that has never been, Megaroc gives us a fascinating view in an alternative past in which the first human being in space would have greeted by Great Britain.
