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The dreams of aviation and space travel weren’t confined to America and Russia early in the twentieth century. Although the Americans Orville and Wilbur Wright were the first to fly a heavier-than-air powered craft, they weren’t far ahead of many people in Europe. Indeed, many of the advances in aviation between the Wrights’ historic 1903 flights and World War I originated in Europe, especially France. One of those French pioneers of flight was Robert Esnault-Pelterie, who was barely twenty-two years of age when the age of aviation opened in 1903. Esnault-Pelterie, also known as “rep” after his initials, earned a degree in science at the Sorbonne in Paris in 1902, the same year he was granted his first patent, for an electrical relay. Esnault-Pelterie’s interest in aviation dates to April 1903, when he attended a lecture where aviation pioneer Octave Chanute discussed his own work and the gliders being tested by the Wrights as they worked toward their historic first powered flight in December of that same year. “Having started in aviation as early as 1903,” he recalled, “in an attempt to check the Wright brothers’ [glider] results, I promptly abandoned their biplane type to devise the first monoplane, bearing in front a seven radial cylinder engine; at the rear were two rudders and a fin.” 4. Hermann Oberth and Early German Rocketry There is no doubt: The moment is here, the hour has come, in which we may dare to undertake the attack on the stars with real prospects of results. It is clear that the armor of the earth’s gravity will not lightly be pierced, and it is expected that it will cost to break through it, much sacrifice of time, money, and perhaps also human life. German spaceflight pioneer Max Valier rep went on to build several aircraft that incorporated innovations to aircraft design that endure to this day. He built the first all-metal monoplane , designed the first radial aircraft engine, and originated the control stick, used ever since in aircraft, in addition to making advances in landing gear. Before the onset of war in 1914, he also started an aircraft manufacturing company, though this venture didn’t succeed. By then, EsnaultPelterie was thinking beyond aircraft. “When flying became a fact,” he wrote later, “having once been only a dream, it was apparent to me, as one who remembered the time when there were even no automobiles, that it would develop rapidly, and I wondered what the next stage might be. Once the atmosphere had been conquered, there remained nothing more but to strike out into the empty space of the universe.” Such thoughts came naturally to Esnault-Pelterie, who was a born tinkerer with a wide interest in many facets of science and engineering. Born in Paris on November 8, 1881, eleven months before Goddard, Esnault-Pelterie was known as a sportsman and outdoors enthusiast who loved to spend time in his machine shop building parts for aircraft and other equipment. For example, he loved to camp in a retreat in the Pyrenees Mountains, and his “tent” included a raised floor, heat lights, running water, a bathtub, a telephone, and a radio that was connected to a hidden microphone (useful for playing jokes on guests). In 1912, Esnault-Pelterie gave lectures in St. Petersburg, Russia, and in Paris in which he speculated on space travel. In his talks he emphasized the importance of changing mass ratios in rockets and the fact that rockets can travel faster and farther as their fuel is burned and can operate in a vacuum. He also spoke about trajectories to the moon, Mars, and Venus, and said atomic energy could open the door to interstellar travel. This lecture was based on his speculations on space travel, which he began to pursue about 1908. Tsiolkovsky and Goddard were also thinking about these concepts, and Dr. André Bing of Belgium had received a patent in his home country for an apparatus that included staged rockets. Although a truncated version of Esnault-Pelterie’s talk was published in France, it did not stir the public interest that Goddard’s 1919 publication did, perhaps because of its obscure title or because it was not backed up by an institution like the Smithsonian. rep put aside his thoughts about space travel during World War I, but by the late 1920s he was lecturing on space exploration again and working on 54 | hermann...

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