> According to Arthur C. Clarke's book, Profiles of the Future, it was Professor A.W. Bickerton in 1926 Very good memory- or detective work- Ed! It's interesting that that was the same year that Robert Goddard launched the first liquid propellant rocket (I visited the site in '74- at which time it was in the middle of a golf course; there was a simple monument or plaque there to signify the event). That and his later rockets used gasoline & liquid oxygen- having about 5x the energy as dynamite. The shuttle (and Saturn V upper stages) uses oxygen & hydrogen, but the exhaust velocity of the resulting H20 is still considerably less than earth gravity escape velocity, so Bickerton didn't quite think that one out fully. ----------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe from SeeSat-L, send a message with 'unsubscribe' in the SUBJECT to SeeSat-L-request@satobs.org List archived at http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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