Rocket experiments in the area of Cuxhaven

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Between 1933 and 1964 numerous rocket experiments were carried out in the area of Cuxhaven, Germany.

Cuxhaven Place in Lower Saxony, Germany

Cuxhaven is an independent town and seat of the Cuxhaven district, in Lower Saxony, Germany. The town includes the northernmost point of Lower Saxony. It is situated on the shore of the North Sea at the mouth of the Elbe River. Cuxhaven has a footprint of 14 kilometres (east–west) by 7 km (4 mi) (north–south). Its town quarters Duhnen, Döse and Sahlenburg are especially popular vacation spots on the North Sea and home to about 52,000 residents.

Germany Federal parliamentary republic in central-western Europe

Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central and Western Europe, lying between the Baltic and North Seas to the north, and the Alps to the south. It borders Denmark to the north, Poland and the Czech Republic to the east, Austria and Switzerland to the south, France to the southwest, and Luxembourg, Belgium and the Netherlands to the west.

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1930s and 1940s

Gerhard Zucker (1908–1985) was a German businessman and rocket engineer. However, none of his machinations proved to be operational, ranging from outright fraud to total failure.

Duhnen Ortsteil of Cuxhaven in Lower Saxony, Germany

Duhnen is a seaside resort (Seebad ) along the North Sea, 5 kilometres (3.1 mi) from the centre of Cuxhaven city, Lower Saxony, Germany. Duhnen is located 351 kilometres (218 mi) northwest of Berlin. In 1935 Duhnen was incorporated into the city Cuxhaven, more than 100 years after the city had been established. Visitors to Hamburg's nearby island of Neuwerk commonly travel through Duhnen. It was at one time a remote fishing and farming village, but today is one of the tourist centres of Cuxland.

Neuwerk Wadden Sea island on the German North Sea coast

Neuwerk  is a 3 km2 (1.2 sq mi) tidal island in the Wadden Sea on the German North Sea coast, with a population of 32. Neuwerk is located 13 km (8 mi) northwest of Cuxhaven, between the Weser and Elbe estuaries. The distance to the centre of Hamburg is about 120 km (70 mi). Archaic English names for the island are New Werk and Newark.

1950s

Hespenbusch is a farm, which belongs to the municipality of Grossenkneten. Karl Poggensee and the Hermann Oberth society operated between 1952 and 1957 a launch site for small rockets with a maximum flight level of some kilometers, close to this farm. In 1957 the launch activities were shifted toward Cuxhaven, since the available area became too small.

The Hermann Oberth society is an association named after Hermann Oberth, the German astronautics pioneer, which develops and builds rockets and trains engineers in space technology.

Ernst Mohr was a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Wuppertal. He developed the meteorological Mohr Rocket, on behalf of the German Rocket Society. The rocket was first launched successfully on September 14, 1958 near Cuxhaven.

1960s


Scharhörn uninhabited German island

Scharhörn is an uninhabited island in the North Sea belonging to the city of Hamburg, Germany. The once most important daymark on the north sea coast, the Scharhörnbake, was maintained here by the City of Hamburg from 1440 to 1979.

Salamander order of amphibians

Salamanders are a group of amphibians typically characterized by a lizard-like appearance, with slender bodies, blunt snouts, short limbs projecting at right angles to the body, and the presence of a tail in both larvae and adults. All present-day salamander families are grouped together under the order Urodela. Salamander diversity is most abundant in the Northern Hemisphere and most species are found in the Holarctic ecozone, with some species present in the Neotropical zone.

Goldfish freshwater fish, common in aquariums

The goldfish is a freshwater fish in the family Cyprinidae of order Cypriniformes. It is one of the most commonly kept aquarium fish.

Literature

Sterne und Weltraum, 3/2005, Page 40 - 45 (in German)

Coordinates: 53°49′27″N8°33′39″E / 53.82416°N 8.56075°E / 53.82416; 8.56075

Geographic coordinate system Coordinate system

A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are often chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position and two or three of the numbers represent a horizontal position; alternatively, a geographic position may be expressed in a combined three-dimensional Cartesian vector. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation. To specify a location on a plane requires a map projection.

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Rocket Missile, spacecraft, aircraft or other vehicle that obtains thrust from a rocket engine

A rocket is a missile, spacecraft, aircraft or other vehicle that obtains thrust from a rocket engine. Rocket engine exhaust is formed entirely from propellant carried within the rocket before use. Rocket engines work by action and reaction and push rockets forward simply by expelling their exhaust in the opposite direction at high speed, and can therefore work in the vacuum of space.

Spaceport facility for launching (or receiving) spacecraft

A spaceport or cosmodrome is a site for launching spacecraft, by analogy to seaport for ships or airport for aircraft. The word spaceport, and even more so cosmodrome, has traditionally been used for sites capable of launching spacecraft into orbit around Earth or on interplanetary trajectories. However, rocket launch sites for purely sub-orbital flights are sometimes called spaceports, as in recent years new and proposed sites for suborbital human flights have been frequently referred to or named 'spaceports'. Space stations and proposed future bases on the moon are sometimes called spaceports, in particular if intended as a base for further journeys.

Aerobee sounding rocket

The Aerobee rocket was a small unguided suborbital sounding rocket used for high atmospheric and cosmic radiation research in the United States in the 1950s.

Sounding rocket Rocket carrying scientific instruments

A sounding rocket, sometimes called a research rocket, is an instrument-carrying rocket designed to take measurements and perform scientific experiments during its sub-orbital flight. The rockets are used to carry instruments from 30 to 900 miles above the surface of the Earth, the altitude generally between weather balloons and satellites; the maximum altitude for balloons is about 25 mi (40 km) and the minimum for satellites is approximately 75 mi (121 km). Certain sounding rockets have an apogee between 620 and 930 miles, such as the Black Brant X and XII, which is the maximum apogee of their class. Sounding rockets often use military surplus rocket motors. NASA routinely flies the Terrier Mk 70 boosted Improved Orion, lifting 600–1,000-pound (270–450 kg) payloads into the exoatmospheric region between 60 and 125 miles.

A sub-orbital spaceflight is a spaceflight in which the spacecraft reaches outer space, but its trajectory intersects the atmosphere or surface of the gravitating body from which it was launched, so that it will not complete one orbital revolution.

Black Brant (rocket) Family of Canadian-designed sounding rockets

The Black Brant is a family of Canadian-designed sounding rockets originally built by Bristol Aerospace, since absorbed by Magellan Aerospace in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Over 800 Black Brants of various versions have been launched since they were first produced in 1961, and the type remains one of the most popular sounding rockets ever built. They have been repeatedly used by the Canadian Space Agency and NASA.

The Berthold Seliger Forschungs- und Entwicklungsgesellschaft mbH (BSFEGmbH) was a company founded by German rocket technical designer Berthold Seliger in 1961. Seliger was a former assistant theoretician professor Dr. Eugen Sänger. The company developed and built prototypes of sounding rockets and launched them near Cuxhaven. The BSFEGmbH cooperated strongly with the Hermann-Oberth-Gesellschaft, of which Berthold Seliger was a member. The first rocket developed by the BSFEGmbH was an improved version of the Kumulus, which was first launched on 19 November 1962 and reached a height of 50 kilometres. On 7 February 1963 the BSFEGmbH launched a two-stage rocket with a maximum height of 80 kilometres and, on 2 May 1963, they launched a three-stage rocket with a maximum flight height of more than 100 kilometres. The latter rocket may have attained the highest flight altitude of all rockets built in post-war Germany. The signals from all these rockets were also received at the observatory in Bochum. After May 1963 the BSFEGmbH worked on the improvement of the steering system of their rockets and thought also on military usable rockets.

Kumulus is the name of a rocket of the "Hermann-Oberth-Gesellschaft e.V.". The first Kumulus rocket was launched on December 20, 1960 near Cuxhaven. A Kumulus rocket is on display at the Hermann Oberth Space Travel Museum in Feucht.

Operation Backfire (World War II)

Operation Backfire was a military scientific operation during and after the Second World War, which was performed mainly by British staff. It was part of the Allies' scramble to acquire German technology. With the consent of U.S. General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the operation was orchestrated by Major Robert Staver from the Rocket Section of the Research and Development branch of the Ordnance Office that was tasked in directing the effort to find and interrogate the German rocket specialists who had built the V-2. Since April 30 he had been in the Nordhausen area searching the smaller laboratories for V-2 technicians. Also Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS) Junior Commander Joan Bernard played a role in this operation.

Arensch Local area in Lower Saxony, Germany

Arensch is a local part of Cuxhaven, a town in Lower Saxony, Germany.

Rocket mail

Rocket mail is the delivery of mail by rocket or missile. The rocket lands by deploying an internal parachute upon arrival. It has been attempted by various organizations in many different countries, with varying levels of success. It has never become widely seen as being a viable option for delivering mail, due to the cost of the schemes and numerous failures.

Seliger Rocket is the designation for the sounding rockets of the Berthold Seliger Forschungs- und Entwicklungsgesellschaft mbH. They were

  1. A single-stage rocket with a length of 3.4 metres and a takeoff thrust of 50 kN. This rocket was first launched on November 19, 1962 near Cuxhaven and reached a height of 40 km.
  2. A two-stage rocket with a length of 6 metres and a takeoff thrust of 50 kN. This rocket was first launched on February 7, 1963 and reached a height of 80 km.
  3. A three-stage rocket with a length of 12.8 metres, a diameter of 0.56 metres and a takeoff thrust of 50 kN. This rocket was first launched on May 2, 1963 with reduced fuel and reached an altitude of 110 km. Later with maximum fuel it reached a height of 150 km.

The Mohr Rocket was a sounding rocket developed by Ernst Mohr in Wuppertal, Germany.

Arcas (rocket) rocket

Arcas was the designation of an American sounding rocket, developed by the Atlantic Research Corp., Alexandria, Va..

Amateur rocketry hobby in which participants experiment with fuels or custom rocket motors

Amateur rocketry, sometimes known as experimental rocketry or amateur experimental rocketry, is a hobby in which participants experiment with fuels and make their own rocket motors, launching a wide variety of types and sizes of rockets. Amateur rocketeers have been responsible for significant research into hybrid rocket motors, and have built and flown a variety of solid, liquid, and hybrid propellant motors.

In Germany, military test rockets were launched in Peenemünde and Cuxhaven, and larger non-military rockets were launched in Hespenbusch, Cuxhaven and Zingst. In World War II, A4-rockets were also launched as weapons from several western areas of Germany. Several launchpads were also constructed for the Bachem Ba 349, developed in 1944/45.

Civilian Space eXploration Team

The Civilian Space eXploration Team, known as CSXT, is a team of around 30 civilians interested in private spaceflight. The team was created by Ky Michaelson. Having conducted multiple rocket launches in an attempt to establish altitude records, CSXT became the first entity to officially launch an amateur rocket into space on May 17 2004, with the successful launch of its "GoFast" rocket to 116 km altitude, an altitude verified by FAA analysis of the team's flight data.