An expedition into space

An expedition into space by Hans Dominik is a technical and scientific future history. It was published in 1918 in volume 39 of the book series " Das Neue Universum " and in the collection of short stories by Hans Dominik "Ein neue Paradies", published in 1977 by Heyne Verlag as paperback no. 3562.

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Hans Dominik is one of the first authors to tell that a journey into space can be realized if one uses the recoil principle as with the rocket . At the same time, he points out that large amounts of energy are required for this journey. His hero therefore uses nuclear energy .

To the short story

In his short story The Journey to Mars , Hans Dominik used the elimination of gravity. That is why he first lets his hero engineer Hans Kallmann say "But the abolition of gravity should be possible", but the answer of his interlocutor Professor Dernberg is that this is completely impossible. The goal can only be achieved if a sufficiently high force acts on the body for a long enough time.

Hans Kallmann knows that very large amounts of energy can be released when matter is transformed into energy (a bold vision of the future by Hans Dominik in 1918, which he had already taken up earlier in his short story A New Paradise ). Hans Kallmann uses the radioactive decay of uranium as an example, in which 1 kg of uranium releases the same thermal energy as 10 large freight trains loaded with coal. But the radioactive decay of uranium takes too long. That is why Hans Kallmann is looking for a means to accelerate this disintegration.

Hans Kallmann succeeds in causing the lead atoms to collapse through simultaneous exposure to heat and high voltage (today we know that this is not so easy). In 3 months he then built his first space rocket, called a radio car, a square room, 4 m long and 3 m wide. With the help of rotatable radioactive surfaces attached to the outside, this rocket can launch into space (Hans Dominik did not worry about the radiation exposure of the occupants). During the first ascent, three of them investigate the composition and temperature of the still unexplored high atmosphere of the earth (this was also the task of the first research rockets). On the first ascent they move 1.7 million kilometers away from the earth and see from there the earth as a tiny moon the size of an apple and the moon as a brightly shining star right next to this unearthly small earth.