Luigi Broglio
Luigi Broglio (born November 11, 1911 in Mestre , Veneto , † January 14, 2001 in Rome ) was an Italian general and space pioneer .
Life
Broglio, son of an artillery officer , had lived in Rome since 1915, where he attended school and graduated in engineering in 1934 . He did military service in the artillery until 1937 and became a reserve officer . Shortly thereafter, he took part in a selection process by the Italian Air Force , which took him on as a first lieutenant and engineer in their research center in Guidonia Montecelio near Rome. Here he worked on various projects until September 1943, including the development of jet engines for combat aircraft . After the armistice and the German occupation of Rome, he joined the partisan group of the later Italian Defense Minister Paolo Emilio Taviani .
After the war Broglio stayed in the Air Force, but also worked as a professor at the Faculty of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Rome and as a visiting professor in Spain and the USA . In 1952 he became dean of the faculty and thus successor to the rocket pioneer Gaetano Arturo Crocco . Broglio built a supersonic wind tunnel (Mach 4) at his faculty . On the east coast of Sardinia , he set up a small rocket launch site for sounding rockets near Capo San Lorenzo , which was then mainly used for military purposes, including testing the Alfa medium-range ballistic missile for the Italian nuclear weapons program . Since 1961 Broglio worked in collaboration with NASA on the "San Marco Project", which envisaged the construction of Italian satellites and a rocket launch site on a platform ( San Marco platform ) off the coast of Kenya. The first satellite was from there to the December 15, 1964 space shot. Broglio's experience then flowed into the Alfa rocket project launched in 1965.
In the years that followed, Broglio continued to work for the Italian Air Force as well as at the University of Rome and, since 1988, at the Italian space agency Agenzia Spaziale Italiana . When it finally decided to downgrade its location in Kenya to a satellite control center, Broglio retired in 1993.
The asteroid (18542) Broglio and the Italian space center near Malindi in Kenya were named after him.
See also
Web links
- Biography (italian)
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Broglio, Luigi |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Italian general and space pioneer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | November 11, 1911 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Mestre , Veneto |
| DATE OF DEATH | January 14, 2001 |
| Place of death | Rome |