Mirak (rocket)

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Mirak (minimum rocket) was the name of the first liquid rocket developed at the beginning of the 1930s by the Association for Space Travel in Berlin .

Participation, financing

Members of the Verein für Raumfahrt received an unused firing range in the Reinickendorf district of Berlin , which was made available to them by the municipal authorities and which became known as the Berlin rocket airfield . Due to a lack of finances, the amateurs also had to use free and freely available materials and equipment, but they have already received donations in kind and money from the industry. In 1930 the association also received a secret grant from the Army Weapons Office of 5000 marks for its work on liquid rockets . The office, which already financed the development of solid rocket rockets, saw the development of rocket technology as a loophole from the constraints of the Versailles Treaty , which prohibited the development of many other weapons. The project have included Hermann Oberth , Rudolf Nebel , Klaus Riedel and Wernher von Braun participated. Oberth often came from Romania and helped design the fluid drive, which he had been working on for a long time.

Mirak and Mirak II

The Mirak had a launch mass of 20 kg, a diameter of ten centimeters and a length of 3.5 m. The Mirak was launched about 100 times, but most of the flights ended in an explosion . After igniting the liquid drive, the rocket should rise to a height of 500 m and then return to earth with a parachute after being burned out. On June 22, 1932, the launch of a Mirak II failed at the Kummersdorf Army Research Center , which was supposed to climb between three and a half and eight kilometers.

literature

  • Ulli Kulke: space striker. Wernher von Braun and the race to the moon. Quadriga, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-86995-026-6 , pp. 63-70

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ulli Kulke: Space Striker. Wernher von Braun and the race to the moon. Quadriga, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-86995-026-6 , p. 67
  2. ↑ Ulli Kulke: Space Striker. Wernher von Braun and the race to the moon. Quadriga, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-86995-026-6 , pp. 68-70, with illus.