Herman Potočnik
pseudonym Hermann Noordung
Slovenian rocket engineer and pioneer of cosmonautics (astronautics) was born on the 22nd of December, 1892 in Pola, southern Istria, Austra-Hungary (now Pula, Croatia). In 1928 he was the first man in history to make plans for an orbital space station and geostationary satellites.
His father Jožef was born in 1841 in Razbor near Slovenj Gradec and he served as a doctor and high navy officer in the Austro-Hungarian Navy. His mother Minka was born in 1854 and was a daughter of a well known wine merchant Jožef Kokošinek from Maribor.
Herman Potočnik made a complete and detailed plan for an orbital space station with artifical gravity (rotating habitable outer ring), which would be powered with solar energy. Since solar power cells were not yet known at that time, Noordung concieved a closed system of pipes producing steam for the steam turbines. His designs also described breathing apparatuses, space suits, elevators and even airlocks, such as we now find in actual space stations. He even mentioned a future of nuclear energy and photon drives.
His contributions to science are very important directly and indirectly by his influence over his many contemporaries, later researchers and scientists, not to mention science fiction writers. He was an engineer and an excellent mathematician, therefore all his plans for the space station were actual blueprints ready for construction. |
Plan for a geostationary satellite
Noordung also made the first plan for a geostationary satellite and even calculated its orbit. Today we cannot even imagine a modern life without satellites. He was a visionary describing the development of a civilization in space at a time when horse droppings were a common site in European cities.
Potočnik died in August of 1929 in Vienna only a couple of moths after the release of his book The Problem of Space Travel - The Rocket Motor. The book was published in Berlin in 1928 but it was not translated into Slovene until 1986. The work is interesting because Potočnik knew of his impending death while writing it and was therefore waging a battle with time. Consequently we can sense a shift from a more mathematical approach full of formulas and dry calculations in the first part of the book towards a more philosophical viewpoint dealing with civilization in space in the second half of the book.
NASA got the translation of this work only in 1995, while the book was translated into Russian as early as 1935 on the order of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, who was at that time already proclaimed a Russian hero. Tsiolkovsky is known as the father of space programs. The book was reprinted in Russia in 1950, making it one of only three scientific books ever to be reprinted there.
The design of Noordung's space station was copied numerous times in science fiction movies (2001: A Space Odyssey, Mission to Mars, Solaris). Today Noordung's orbit is mistakenly named Clarke's orbit. Arthur C. Clarke (the author of 2001: A Space Odyssey) was studying Potočnik's ideas and later developed the first satellite. He also regularly quoted Potočnik in his articles. |
