hobbsyoyo
Deity
- Joined
- Jul 13, 2012
- Messages
- 26,575
I'm not trying to take the spotlight away from their achievement, just combat the notion that Nazi science was central to the development of rocketry because it had to be rather than coincidentally. I'm also fighting the false and hyper-prevalent trope that American and to a lesser extent Russian rocketry would not have taken off (no pun intended) absent an infusion of German know-how.
The V-2 is objectively crappy because it failed in everything it set out to do. The Germans went with a terribly complicated and inefficient waterfall injector design implementation, they used volatile fuels that made fielding the weapon a logistical nightmare, their turbopumps were run on an entirely separate powerhead from the main combustion chamber (which is frankly dumb), they managed to botch the implementation of gyroscopic control of the rocket that Goddard introduced and it took them years and billions of dollars to overcome aero-structural problems that they didn't understand. It was just a useless project in the end and they spent so much time, money and manpower on it that it helped the Allies win the war. And on top of all of that - or rather because of all of that - at the end of the day it was a crappy weapon that fulfilled no meaningful requirements at the strategic or tactical levels. I mean sure, it was the best strategic missile of the era because no one else built one; but no one else built one because the technology to make a useful weapon of this type wasn't there and wouldn't be for decades.
It was clearly the most advanced rocket at that time but was not a quantum leap from what Goddard put together. It was a quantum change in size but in every other respect was ho-hum at best and terrible in many things. Rocketdyne was formed by North American Aviation (of P-51 and F-86 fame) to fix the major issues with the V-2 and they were able to overcome some design hurdles relating to the injectors and pumps in months that the Germans were unable to fix in years of concerted effort. And while you can say it's easier to improve something you didn't invent, ultimately the Germans didn't invent a whole lot themselves as they just implemented and incremented designs that Goddard published openly.
Additionally, at least for the Americans, solid fueled rockets have been a much bigger focus of development - an effort kicked off by what would become JPL and Aerojet before the war and which continued through it and beyond. The Germans did have a few RATO (rocket assisted take-off) bottles to assist their jets but they sucked compared to their American counterparts and the Americans and Russians fielded a wider variety of solid fueled rocket weapon systems than the Germans ever hoped for. The US then ultimately built almost the entirety of their strategic missile fleet and operational tactical missile systems around solid fuel designs which again the Germans had no major contributions to. The same is less true of the Russians but their liquid fueled engines have even less German heritage than American ones.
The V-2 is objectively crappy because it failed in everything it set out to do. The Germans went with a terribly complicated and inefficient waterfall injector design implementation, they used volatile fuels that made fielding the weapon a logistical nightmare, their turbopumps were run on an entirely separate powerhead from the main combustion chamber (which is frankly dumb), they managed to botch the implementation of gyroscopic control of the rocket that Goddard introduced and it took them years and billions of dollars to overcome aero-structural problems that they didn't understand. It was just a useless project in the end and they spent so much time, money and manpower on it that it helped the Allies win the war. And on top of all of that - or rather because of all of that - at the end of the day it was a crappy weapon that fulfilled no meaningful requirements at the strategic or tactical levels. I mean sure, it was the best strategic missile of the era because no one else built one; but no one else built one because the technology to make a useful weapon of this type wasn't there and wouldn't be for decades.
It was clearly the most advanced rocket at that time but was not a quantum leap from what Goddard put together. It was a quantum change in size but in every other respect was ho-hum at best and terrible in many things. Rocketdyne was formed by North American Aviation (of P-51 and F-86 fame) to fix the major issues with the V-2 and they were able to overcome some design hurdles relating to the injectors and pumps in months that the Germans were unable to fix in years of concerted effort. And while you can say it's easier to improve something you didn't invent, ultimately the Germans didn't invent a whole lot themselves as they just implemented and incremented designs that Goddard published openly.
Additionally, at least for the Americans, solid fueled rockets have been a much bigger focus of development - an effort kicked off by what would become JPL and Aerojet before the war and which continued through it and beyond. The Germans did have a few RATO (rocket assisted take-off) bottles to assist their jets but they sucked compared to their American counterparts and the Americans and Russians fielded a wider variety of solid fueled rocket weapon systems than the Germans ever hoped for. The US then ultimately built almost the entirety of their strategic missile fleet and operational tactical missile systems around solid fuel designs which again the Germans had no major contributions to. The same is less true of the Russians but their liquid fueled engines have even less German heritage than American ones.
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