Eugen Sänger

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Not to be confused with Eugene Saenger.
Eugen Sänger
West-Berlin, Germany
NationalityBohemian, Austrian
Alma mater
OccupationEngineer
SpouseIrene Sänger-Bredt
Engineering career
Significant advancelifting body and ramjet

Eugen Sänger (22 September 1905 – 10 February 1964) was an

aerospace engineer best known for his contributions to lifting body and ramjet
technology.

Early career

Sänger was born in the former mining town of

Die Rakete zu den Planetenräumen ("By Rocket into Planetary Space"), which inspired him to change from studying civil engineering to aeronautics. He also joined Germany's amateur rocket movement, the Verein für Raumschiffahrt
(VfR – "Society for Space Travel") which was centered on Oberth.

In 1932 Sänger became a member of the

NSDAP.[1]

Sänger made rocket-powered flight the subject of his thesis, but it was rejected by the university as too fanciful.

Sänger was allowed to graduate when he submitted a far more mundane paper on the statics of

Reichsluftfahrtministerium (RLM, or "Reich Aviation Ministry") which saw Sänger's ideas as a potential way to accomplish the goal of building a bomber that could strike the United States from Germany (the Amerikabomber project). The RLM gave him a research institute near Braunschweig and also built a liquid oxygen plant and a test stand for a 100 tonne thrust engine. At the time, Sänger's hiring was opposed by Wernher von Braun, who felt that his own work was being duplicated and may have seen the Austrian and his work as a threat to his own dominance of the field.[2]

Sub-orbital bomber concept

Main article: Silbervogel

Sänger agreed to lead a rocket development team in the

lbf) of thrust
. In this design, he was one of the first to suggest using the rocket's fuel as a way of cooling the engine, by circulating it around the rocket nozzle before burning it in the engine.

By 1942, the

Skoda-Kauba Sk P.14 interceptor, until the end of World War II
.

Postwar

After the war ended, Sänger worked for the

Vasily, and scientist Grigori Tokaty to convince him to come to the Soviet Union, but they failed to do so. It has also been reported that Stalin instructed the NKVD to kidnap him.[5]

In 1951, he became the first President of the International Astronautical Federation. In the same year he married Dr. Irene Bredt, his first assistant, a German engineer, mathematician and physicist co-credited with the design of a proposed intercontinental spaceplane/bomber.[6]

Model of concept Sänger II at Technik Museum Speyer

By 1954, Sänger had returned to Germany and three years later was directing a

interstellar spacecraft propulsion prefiguring the concept of laser propulsion and the solar sail
.

In 1960, he assisted the United Arab Republic in developing the Al-Zafir missile.[8]

He died in Berlin, in 1964. Sänger's grave is located in the cemetery "Alter Friedhof" in

Stuttgart-Vaihingen
. His work on the Silbervogel would prove important to the
X-20 Dyna-Soar, and ultimately Space Shuttle programs
.

Honours

Honorary member of numerous societies for Space Research in Germany, Great Britain, Austria, the United States of America, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Argentina, Italy.

  • Elected Honorary Fellow of the British Interplanetary Society (B.I.S.) in 1949[9]
  • Hermann Oberth Medal for services to aerospace research
  • Austrian Cross of Honour for Science and Art, 1st class
  • Commander of the
    Ordre du Merite
    pour la Recherche et l'Invention, Paris
  • Gagarin Gold Medal Assoziazione Internazionale Uomo nello Spazio, Rome
  • Gold Medal at the Milan Fair
  • Sängergasse named after him in Vienna Simmering (11th District) (1971)

See also

Notes

  1. ISBN 3828908845
  2. ^ Neufeld, M.J. Von Braun: Dreamer of Space, Engineer of War. New York: Knopf, 2007. p 101.
  3. ^ "Bredt". Archived from the original on December 27, 2016.
  4. ^ Ley, Willy (June 1964). "Anyone Else for Space?". For Your Information. Galaxy Science Fiction. pp. 110–128.
  5. Astronautix.com. Archived from the original
    on 2011-08-07. Retrieved 2008-01-17.
  6. ISSN 0094-5765
    .
  7. ^ "Sänger, Eugen Albert". Catalogus Professorum TU Berlin (in German). Retrieved 2023-09-14.
  8. ^ "The United Arab Republic Missile Program" (PDF). Central Intelligence Agency. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2010-11-05. Retrieved 2012-10-11.
  9. ^ "Dr Eugen Sänger". Journal of the British Interplanetary Society. 9 (2). March 1950.

References and further reading

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Eugen Sänger.

Books and technical reports

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