Reinhard Furrer

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Reinhard Furrer
Reinhard Furrer
Country: Germany
Organization: DLR
selected on December 19, 1982
Calls: 1 space flight
Begin: October 30, 1985
Landing: November 6, 1985
Time in space: 7d 0h 44min
retired on November 1985
Space flights

Reinhard Alfred Furrer (born November 25, 1940 in Wörgl , Tyrol , † September 9, 1995 in Berlin ) was a German science astronaut .

biography

After the Second World War , the family had to move to Germany and found a new home in Kempten (Allgäu) . There Furrer made his Abitur at the natural science secondary school in Kempten .

To study physics , Furrer first went to the University of Kiel , where he joined the old Königsberg fraternity Alemannia in Kiel in 1960 , and then to the FU Berlin . During his student days he also took part in escape operations in Berlin, which was then divided, including tunnel 57 , where on October 5, 1964 the GDR border guard Egon Schultz was accidentally shot by another border guard. According to the Wall Museum Berlin is used in tunneling and owe issued there Erdtransportwagen Furrer.

Former home of Furrers, Brunnenstrasse 135, Berlin

In 1969 Furrer completed his diploma in Berlin, and in 1972 he obtained his doctorate there with a thesis on optical double resonance in single-crystal solids . In 1974 he became an assistant professor in Stuttgart. In 1979 he completed his habilitation. He spent two years in the USA, at the University of Chicago and the Argonne National Laboratory .

In 1977 Furrer applied to what was then the German Research and Research Institute for Aerospace (DFVLR, now the German Aerospace Center , DLR) when they were looking for a scientific astronaut for the first Spacelab mission. In the first selection he was still inferior to Ulf Merbold , but he was nominated for the selection of the first German Spacelab mission in 1982. On October 30, 1985, he started on board the space shuttle Challenger for the D1 mission as a payload specialist, together with Ernst Messerschmid and the Dutchman Wubbo Ockels , and the five Americans Henry Hartsfield , Steven Nagel , Bonnie Dunbar , James Buchli and Guion Bluford . Furrer carried out physical and medical experiments, examining, among other things, the effects of weightlessness in material processing and on the human body. For research on weightlessness, he used a specially made measuring helmet that can be seen hanging in the special exhibition of the German Museum of Technology in Berlin .

After his space flight in 1987 he became professor and director of the Institute for Space Technology at the Free University of Berlin, which he had founded and which was renamed the Institute for Space Sciences a few years later.

Furrer was an avid sports (PPL) and professional pilot (CPL). He got his first pilot's license in 1974 and undertook many flight tours with single-engine sport aircraft, for example a flight over the Greenland ice sheet or a solo flight from Germany to Quito ( Ecuador ). From 1986 he was President of the Aircraft Owner and Pilot Association in Germany ( AOPA-Germany ).

Memorial plaque on the house at Brunnenstrasse  135 in Berlin.

Furrer died on September 9, 1995 in a plane crash during an air show at the Johannisthal airfield in Berlin, where he was the guest of honor. After the end of the official program, he wanted to take part in a sightseeing flight with a historic Messerschmitt Bf 108 . After performing an aerobatic maneuver ( roll ) at too low a height , the machine crashed, pilot Gerd Kahdemann and Reinhard Furrer were immediately dead. It could not be clarified who had flown the machine because the machine had a double control .

Furrer's urn was buried next to those of his parents in the Evangelical Cemetery in Kempten (Allgäu) .

Processing of live comments and more

Before and during the D1 mission, Furrer continuously recorded comments on a small voice recorder. A microphone was built into his helmet so that recordings were also possible during the start-up phase. This material processed Furrer and the television and radio journalist Wolfgang Rathgeber for radio play "If what is left of the earth, only the voices in your ear are - reportage from space" that the WDR and RIAS Berlin produces and Was released in 1987. Messages embedded in the radio play were spoken by Egon Hoegen . In the radio play, Furrer also talks about why he wanted to participate in this mission:

"I cannot imagine that there is anyone who is given the opportunity to leave the earth, to stick their head out into the world, that they would not spontaneously say: yes!"

- Reinhard Furrer : When what is left of the earth can only be heard by the voices

For the ambient track Zwei G by Aural Float , which was published in 1997, material by Reinhard Furrer was also used.

The Munich pop group Moulinettes released a sonorous homage to the astronaut on the album 20 Flowers in March 1998 : "You fly high, Reini Furrer".

The radio play Spaceman '85 was produced in 2005 by Andreas Ammer and Console (Martin Gretschmann) on behalf of WDR . Here, too, the live recordings of the astronaut, who has since died, were used.

literature

  • Helge Dvorak: Biographical Lexicon of the German Burschenschaft. Volume I: Politicians, Part 7: Supplement A – K, Winter, Heidelberg 2013, ISBN 978-3-8253-6050-4 . Pp. 351-353.
  • Julide Tanriverdi: Reinhard Furrer - The Sum of the Universe , ISBN 3-548-35632-X
  • Reinhard Furrer, Brigitte Eckel: The next moon will be different , ISBN 3-7630-1410-1

See also

Web links

Commons : Reinhard Furrer  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Reinhard Furrer, German Astronaut, November 54, November 12, 1995, accessed on September 9, 2017 .
  2. ↑ Torsten Harmsen: Fraternization in space . In: Berliner Zeitung , September 20, 2018, p. 17 (print edition).
  3. ↑ a b Wolfgang Rathgeber: When what is left of the earth is only the voices in the ear - report from space - Radio DRS 2, 06/11/08, 8 p.m.-9:05 p.m. May 27, 2008, accessed December 18, 2012 (with links to audio samples).
  4. Jump up ↑ Aural Float - Two G / Dup Up The Virus. Discogs, accessed December 18, 2012 .
  5. ↑ Ammer & Console: Spaceman 85 feat. Reinhard Furrer. Retrieved December 18, 2012 (with audio sample).
personal data
SURNAME Furrer, Reinhard
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Furrer, Reinhard Alfred (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German astronaut, physicist, pilot
DATE OF BIRTH November 25, 1940
PLACE OF BIRTH Worgl
DATE OF DEATH September 9, 1995
Place of death Berlin