1929

From The Space Library

J. Jongbloed experimentally recognized the occurrence of a disease like the bends, or caisson disease, at pressures of less than 1 atmosphere.

U.S. Bureau of Standards developed the radio-echo altimeter.

NACA Annual Report indicated that aerodynamic efficiency may be increased by applying the principle of boundary-layer control to the wings and possibly other parts of an airplane.

The Fall issue of Wonder Stories Quarterly publishes an English translation of The Shot Into Infinity a science fiction story by German rocket pioneer Otto Willi Gail.

Gail also contributes an article to Das Universum recounting the impact of the rocket car at Avus raceway and spelling out its potential for stratospheric flight, in The Miracle of the Rocket.

July - September

Hermann Noordung pseudonym for Capt. Potocnik of the Austrian Imperial Army) expanded the ideas of Hermann Oberth on space flight in a detailed description of an orbiting space observatory. The problems of weightlessness, space communications, maintaining a livable environment for the crew, and extravehicular activity were considered. Among the uses of such an observatory were chemical and physical experiments in a vacuum, telescopes of great size and efficiency, detailed mapping of the earth's surface, weather observation, surveillance of shipping routes, and military reconnaissance.

Hermann Noordung, "The Problems of Space Flying," translated from the German, Science Wonder Stories, July-September, 1929; Wernher von Braun and Frederick I. Ordway III, History of Rocketry and Space Travel (1966), p. 202.

The Conquest of Planetary Space by Yuri Kondratyuk is published in Moscow. Despite a small print-run the book was almost immediately reviewed by rocket enthusiast Robert Lademann in the German magazine Zeitschrift für Flugtechnik und Motorluftschiffahrt and in the VfR's Die Rakete Zeitschrift für Raumschiffahrt in a review by Willy Ley.