Rocket Launching of Gliders

The following citation is from http://astronautix.com

at the
blackpowder section:

'Automobile manufacturer Fritz von Opel piloted his
own rocket glider, Opel Raket 2,
in tests near Frankfurt on 30 September 1928.

Its 16 rockets, each producing 50 pounds of thrust,
were built by Friedrich Sander a pyrotechnics specialist.


The propulsion system combined high-thrust, fast-burning
powder rockets for initial acceleration
with lower-thrust, slower-burning rockets
to sustain velocity.

Opel approached Alexander M. Lippisch, a young aero
designer working at the Rhon-Rossitten-Gesellschaft,

who had already displayed a penchant for the unorthodox
in airplane configuration, with the proposal that he,
too, design a glider for rocket power.

Max Valier and Alexander Sander also succeeded in arousing
enthusiasm for rocket propulsion in a twenty- seven-year-old
aircraft designer, Gottlop Espenlaub. His E 15 tail-less
design was of interest as a rocketplane.

On 11 June, Fritz Stamer effected the first rocket-
propelled flight in Lippish's glider. The glider had
been dubbed Ente, or Duck.

That lead later to the Lippish's Komet - the Messerschmitt
Me 163, liquid rocket manned interceptor, (piloted
by Hanna Reisch, and Rudy Opitz I think, among others).


Reinhold Tiling launched a black-powder rocket from

Osnabruck in 1931. It rose to a height of 2.5 miles.


Gerhard Zucker envisioned rocket mail service across
the English Channel. The longest shot he attempted
was from Harris to Scarp, in western Scotland, on 31
July 1934. But the rocket blew up before takeoff.

In 1939 researchers at the California Institute of
Technology in California, seeking to develop a high
performance solid rocket motor to assist aircraft takeoff,
combined black powder with common road asphalt to produce
the first true composite motor. This was the birth
of the true composite motor and marked the end of the
use of black powder in major rocketry applications.
'


History,
The great path to the Future,

Jim Culp USA
GatorCity, Florida
Std Libelle