The Problem of Space Travel - The Rocket Motor

Herman Potočnik Noordung
1928

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. The publisher, Richard Carl Schmidt, printed the year 1929 as a publishing date, probably from a purely business motive (to keep the book looking new throughout the coming year) and this date is often mistakenly given as the actual date of publication. In 188 pages and 100 handmade illustrations, Potočnik described a plan for establishment of a permanent human presence in outer space. He conceived a detailed design for a space station, regarded by Russian and American historians of spaceflight to be the first Space architecture (T.N. Zhelnina, F.I. Ordway, R.D. Launius, J.D. Hunley). He described the use of orbiting spacecraft for detailed observation of the ground for peaceful and military purposes, and described how the special conditions of space could be useful for scientific experiments. Potočnik expressed strong doubts of the potentially destructive military use of these fresh discoveries. Wikipedia.

In 1929, an Austro-Hungarian - Slovene called Herman Potocnik published a book under the pseudonym of 'Noordung'. The book was Das Problem der Befahrung des Weltraums (The Problem of Space Travel). It was the first book to devote most of its pages to space stations. Noordung proposed the Wohnrad (inhabitable wheel) design.

Editions:

Original by Richard Carl Schmidt, 1928

Slovenian translation by Slovenska Matica, 1986, 1999

English translation by NASA, 1995

Slovenian and English by KSEVT, 2010

KSEVT edition that travelled to ISS, 2012