Luigi Broglio

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Luigi Broglio (11 November 1911 – 14 January 2001),

University of Rome La Sapienza. Known as "the Italian von Braun",[2] he is best known as the architect of the San Marco programme
.

The facility he conceived, originally the

18542 Broglio.[3][4]

Life

Early years

Born in

Armistice in Italy
during World War II in September 1943 when Broglio fled from occupying German forces and joined a partisan group.

After the war he became dean of La Sapienza's school of aeronautical engineering in 1952, the successor to the rocket pioneer

Gaetano Arturo Crocco. At the school he formed the Centro Ricerche Aerospaziali (CRA), establishing a supersonic wind tunnel. In 1956 he was assigned leadership of air-force's ammunition research unit Direzione Generali Armi e Munitioni (DGAM), responsible for the military’s rocket programme, by General Secretary of Aeronautics Mario Pezzi. The unit ran the Salto di Quirra rocket test range on Sardinia and Broglio would be involved in weather experiments using American Nike-Cajun rockets to release sodium clouds for study.[1][5]

San Marco programme

Main article: San Marco programme

With the launch of

National Research Council with the aim of gathering support for an Italian space endeavour. With Broglio as president of the commission, they were successful in lobbying the Italian government to support his proposal for a national programme to set up an offshore equatorial launch base with the support of NASA rockets and crew training. The programme would lead to the launch of the first Italian-built satellite, San Marco 1
. San Marco 1 was not launched from the platform.

Later life

In the years after, Broglio continued to pursue his career in the Italian Air Force as well as his academic work at La Sapienza and, since its formation in 1988, also as a director of the Italian Space Agency (ASI). When the decision was made in 1993 to downgrade the center in Kenya to a satellite ground station, Broglio withdrew from ASI's board of directors and went into retirement.

See also

References

  1. ^ a b "The Dreamers - Luigi Broglio" (in Italian). Italian National Institute for Astrophysics – Astronomical Observatory of Bologna. Retrieved 27 August 2010.
  2. ^ "Luigi Broglio, the Italian von Braun" (in Italian). "Explora" science channel. Archived from the original on 10 March 2012. Retrieved 9 June 2010.
  3. ^ "The San Marco Project Research Centre". Centro di Ricerca Progetto San Marco - University of Rome "La Sapienza". Retrieved 27 August 2010.
  4. NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
    . Retrieved 9 June 2010.
  5. ^
    ISBN 978-2-7010-1518-7
    .

Bibliography

  • Di Bernardo Nicolai, Giorgio. Nella nebbia, in attesa del Sole. Breve storia di Luigi Broglio, padre dell'astronautica italiana (2005)

External links
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Luigi_Broglio&oldid=1203424775"