VOLUME 1, Nยบ 5
DATE: JUNE 2016
Reach the Sky Bulletin HERMAN POTOCNIK NOORDUNG - FAMOUS SLOVENIAN ROCKET ENGINEER 1913 he studied in a military technical academy in Mรถdlingu by Vienna and he became a Lieutenant engineer.
Herman Potocnik Noordung was a Slovenian engineer, pioneer of cosmonautics, space flights and technology. He was born on 22nd of December in the year 1892 in Pula in the Austro-Hungarian empire (today Croatia), he died on 27th of August in the year 1929 in Vienna in Austria. Herman was the sun of Josef Potocnik and Minka. In the year 1894, when he's father died, he's mother moved to Maribor city where Herman was attending primary school for 4 years. He had 2 brothers Adolf and Gustav and one sister Francka. In the year 1903/1904 he moved to Bad Fischau by Vienna, where he attended lower secondary school. He's administrator was his uncle Josef Kokoschingg, a lawyer in Graz. He attended military school in Hranicah on Moravian. His uncle Henrich was a general in the army and he made studying in Austrian possible. In between of 1910 and
During the First World War he served in Galicia, Serbia and Bosnia and in 1915 he was promoted to the rank of First Lieutenant (Oberleutnant). He was assigned to the southwestern front of the Soca battlefield and there he experienced a breakthrough of the Austrian army to the river Piava and its retreat. In 1919 he was pensioned off from the Austrian military with the rank of Captain because of tuberculosis that he contracted during the war. He started to study electrical engineering in the mechanical engineering department of the University of Technology in Vienna, Austria, and was awarded a doctorate in engineering. From 1925 onward, he devoted himself entirely to the problems of rocket science and space technology. He spend the last 4 years of his life with his brother Adolf and devoted his time for planning about ways to get to space and live there. At the end of 1928, he published his sole book, Das Problem der Befahrung des Weltraums der Raketen-Motor (The Problem of Space Travel - The Rocket Motor) in Berlin. Potocnik set out a plan for a breakthrough into space and the establishment of a permanent human presence there. He conceived a detailed design for a space station, regarded by Russian and American historians of spaceflight to be the first architecture in space and was the first man to recognize the significance of the geostationary orbit, on which the station would orbit the Earth.
With his many ideas he became one of the founders of astronautics. Potocnik's book described geostationary satellites/station (see the picture). The wheel-shaped space station served as an inspiration for further development by Wernher von Braun. Von Braun saw orbiting space stations as a stepping stone to travel to other planets. In 1968, Stanley Kubrick's groundbreaking film, 2001: A Space Odyssey, depicted such a role for "Space Station V". Nowadays modern theoreticians and technology engineers uses those achieve-
ments Noordung has made in his short live. Description and a sketch of a space station in Hermann Noordung's The Problem of Space Travel (1929). Alen Petek, Slovenia
During the Slovenian meeting we visited the Museum KSEVT dedicated to Herman Potocnik Noordung who lived in that town.