V2 Rocket Research Articles

Dr. Space Junk vs the Universe: Archaeology and the Future

Dr. Space Junk vs the Universe: Archaeology and the Future

The Showgirls from Eltham, the Windmill Theatre and the V2 Rocket: One family’s experience as a window on aspects of interwar cultural life

The journey of the Cooper family from small town New Zealand in the early 1920s to Sydney, and then to London, where they arrived in May 1935, provides a frame to look at aspects of social change in the interwar period. Their story, which sees the two daughters of the family appearing in the risqué nude revues at London's Windmill Theatre in the early years of the Second World War, could be viewed as exotic and atypical but does provide a vehicle to look at aspects of cultural change and media influence during a time when “modern women understood self-display to be part of the quest for mobility, self-determination, and sexual identity"1
 1 Liz Conor, The Spectacular Modern Woman:Feminine Visibility in the 1920s (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004), p.29. Conorargues that the importance of the association of feminine visibility with agency cannot be overestimated.

On Cartographic Techniques in Literature

AbstractMy article investigates the manifold interactions between textual and diagrammatic elements. First, it outlines the changes in literary and cultural studies in the wake of the so-called ‘topographical turn,’ which have made possible the identification of certain cartographic practices as cultural techniques. Second, it discusses Friedrich Kittler’s idea of literature as a cultural technique itself, and considers how this concept can be reconciled with the topographical turn. Third, it analyses a handful of cartographic techniques employed in narratives and argues for a field of scriptural operations that provide a common ground for jointly reading maps and novels. Fourth, it carries out a reading of Thomas Pynchon’sGravity’s Rainbowwhich focuses on how the diagrammatic inscription of the V2 rocket and its arc condition both the protagonists’ movement on the novel’s plane and the map-making instances in the narrative. Fifth and finally, it points out why Pynchon’s work might be considered a medial counterpart of a map if the topographical approach, instead of being considered a comparison between fictional and real locations, is understood as a scrutiny into the operations indispensable to creating a fictional territory.

Detection of supersonic rockets using passive bistatic radar

The history of rockets starts in antiquity, and has continued through to modern times. The modern rocket era started before World War II (WWII), when amateur rocket engineers were building and launching their rockets. During WWII rocket technology was closely associated with weapon development, with the famous V2 rocket as the most notable example. After the war, rockets were of major importance to space exploration programs [1]. Interest in rocket technology is still high, including among students and amateur engineers.

In memoriam: Sir Peter Mansfield (1933–2017)

In memoriam: Sir Peter Mansfield (1933–2017)

The Wall of Terror and Deception

Contrary to Nazi propaganda and despite some brilliant engineering, Hitler's 60001 km 'Atlantic Wall' of coastal fortifications proved fairly ineffective from a strategic point of view Seventy years after VE day we visit some of the Wall's remaining sites in France. The words 'Atlantic Wall' were largely metaphorical - a propaganda-style soundbite to describe 15,600 concrete bunkers, gun batteries, turrets, tunnels, towers and emplacements, built along the coastline. With time, several V1 and V2 rocket factories, depots and launch sites were to be added to the Wall, mostly in Northern France, for use against Hitler's sworn enemy, Britain.

Seeing Things … Differently, or, Hallucinating the Postmodern

From thermodynamics and rocket technology to the deep web, Thomas Pynchon's novels and stories have often juxtaposed science and technology with unusual, not to say downright implausible happenings. This is perhaps the result of a fascination with contorting scientific knowledge into strange applications, whether as metaphors for social mores or to see how far its logics can be pushed toward the breaking point, but it is assuredly grounded in the relationship between the human and the technological and how American society deals with its contemporary technological environment. For example, Bleeding Edge explores the growth of the internet and the dot-com boom, Vineland focuses on television and film, and Gravity's Rainbow deals with the V2 rocket program. Obviously, such reductive statements omit the complexities of Pynchon's inclusions of and allusions to competing paradigms and conspiracy theories, but in each case what is foregrounded is how individuals understand and relate to the world. As such, it is possible to assert that Pynchon's fictions have always been involved in representing and articulating of mind. Such states might differ across his fictions in terms of their setting and context, but whether concerned with the 1893 Chicago World's Fair (Against the Day), the 9/11 attacks (Bleeding Edge), California at various points (The Crying of Lot 49, Vineland, Inherent Vice), World War Two and its aftermath (V, Gravity's Rainbow), or even colonial America (Mason & Dixon), Pynchon's works are invariably concerned with seeing things differently than established histories might otherwise imply and, moreover, foregrounding the relativism and partiality of any individual perspective or overly simplified way of perceiving the world. His protagonists search for answers to make sense of their experiences as they are cast adrift from meaning; in the case of Slothrop from Gravity's Rainbow, he is literally lost as he disappears from the narrative part way through. Within this framework, a recurrent trope of Pynchon's fictions is negative psychological responses to the environment (paranoia, uncertainty, emotional and epistemological insecurity) as a result of a failure to reconcile individual experiences with something defined as normal or normative. Pynchon's characters neither grow nor find answers, but this is precisely the point: they accumulate data, clues, and/or experiences, but no single answer suffices to define everything, and no individual's answer corresponds to any other's. As a result of this, one of the disciplines/discourses most often referenced in his fictions is psychiatry, for even when not directly connected to the narrative arc, psychological and psychiatric terminology and characters are nonetheless present and serve to lead the reader to the perception that reality is contested, not a given, and that perception is not straightforwardly schematic. More specifically, this article examines the ways in which perceptions of hallucinations--as psychiatric symptoms--have been represented in Pynchon's works and, more importantly, how they have augmented and shifted the territory upon which distinctions between hallucination and reality are founded. Within his work is a suspicion of the modes of psychiatric classifications and an attendant concern with the problems of control in the creation of such classifications, and we see this as broadly emblematic of a particular perspective evident within postmodern literature and theory. In this interpretation, Jean-Francois Lyotard's much-vaunted incredulity toward metanarratives is foreshadowed within Pynchon's oeuvre as a suspicion towards those who would describe and define reality at the expense of other worldviews (xxiv). (1) After a brief examination of how theorists such as Fredric Jameson and Jean Baudrillard have represented postmodern society, this essay moves on to explore the problems of binary-based psychiatric definitions of hallucinations. …

In Memoriam: Friedrich A. Kittler, 1943–2011

Previous articleNext article No AccessTributeIn Memoriam: Friedrich A. Kittler, 1943–2011Bernard Dionysius GeogheganBernard Dionysius Geoghegan Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Critical Inquiry Volume 41, Number 2Winter 2015 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/679096 Views: 144Total views on this site © 2015 by The University of Chicago. 0093-1896/15/4102-0009$10.00. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Pamela Mary Spencer (née Bacon)

Pamela Mary Spencer (nee Bacon) (“Pam”) entered medical school just after the end of the second world war. A place at the Royal Free having been put in doubt at...

PROPULSION AND CATALYSIS - HISTORICAL SURVEY, UP-TO-DATE OVERVIEW, AND CURRENT CHALLENGES

This review presents a survey on the application of catalysis to propulsion. The first application was developed for the decomposition of concentrated aqueous solutions of hydrogen peroxide before WWII in Germany (He-176 plane, V1 and V2 rocket programs, torpedoes, and submarines). After WWII, the UK Black Knight rocket program associated kerosene with H2O2 and a silver screen catalyst bed. The beginning of the space programs led to the replacement of H2O2 by more stable hydrazine, using Ir/Al2O3 catalysts, for satellites and launchers. In recent years, hydrazine substitutes (called "green propellants") have been proposed to satisfy new environmental concerns, improve performance, and reduce cost. The most studied substitutes are energetic aqueous ionic mixtures containing an ionic oxidizer and a fuel. Commonly studied oxidizers are hydroxylammonium nitrate or ammonium dinitramide. The current challenge is to develop a catalyst that is active at low temperatures and able to sustain the high temperatures of the product gases. Other candidates that have also been proposed include highly concentrated hydrogen peroxide (90−98 wt-%) and nitrous oxide N2O(g). Other applications of catalysis to propulsion are: (1) hybrid engines, which could use a liquid oxidizer that would be able to burn a solid fuel, after catalytic decomposition; (2) hypergolic bipropellants with a soluble catalyst in the fuel; (3) catalytic cracking of endothermic fuel for hypersonic jets or for air breathing pulse detonating engines; (4) catalytic ignition of cryogenic H2−O2 mixtures; or (5) as a catalyst to modify burn rates for solid propulsion.

A modern Marshall Plan?

At end of Second World War, Allies were determined that Germany should never go to war again. Although country, divided into four zones occupied by Britain, United States, France and Soviet Union, was in economic chaos, much of its industrial base had survived. The first 'Level of Industry Plan' envisaged destruction of what was left of German war machine by reducing steel and coal production and dismantling heavy engineering industries. Around 1,500 listed manufacturing plants would be destroyed or removed to Allied countries. Germany was destined for standard of life that had existed during Great Depression and, it was hoped, a peaceful pastoral society with a little light industry would emerge. All Allies took part in this planned post-war plundering of German industry and technology. As well as physically removing factories, victors seized intellectual property (patents, industrial secrets, scientific and technical knowledge) along with many scientists and technicians, including most famously, Werner von Braun who had worked on V2 Rocket. An elite British intelligence unit abducted hundreds of German scientists and put them to work in government ministries and private firms in UK, giving a boost to British business and impeding German ability to compete. Ironically, Volkswagen factory was offered to Britain but rejected, Rootes commission reporting that the vehicle does not meet fundamental technical requirement of a motor-car... is quite unattractive to average buyer... to build car commercially would be a completely uneconomic enterprise. The revival of factory was largely down to a British army officer, Major Ivan Hirst, who persuaded military to buy car. By 1946 factory was producing 1,000 vehicles a month and in 1947 commenced exports to Holland.

The conservation of a V2 rocket

A V2 rocket, which is one of the last remaining 17 examples in the world and one of the few which is complete, is held at the RAF Museum in Cosford, England. In 1997 it was noticed that large areas of rust were appearing on the underside of the main body and so it was decided to dismantle the rocket, treat existing deterioration, and apply consolidants which would slow down any further damage. This paper discusses some of the problems encountered when working with an interdisciplinary team whose members, although highly technically skilled, were unfamiliar with the differences between restoration, which has been the traditional approach to many twentieth-century objects, and ‘object centred’ conservation. A digital camera, which provided an instant visual image via a PC, was used to document the work as it progressed and the images were eventually saved to CD-ROM as part of the permanent conservation record.

Explanation in Biology: Explanation in Biology

During the war, I worked in aircraft design. About a year after D-day, an exhibition was arranged at Farnborough of the mass of German equipment that had been captured, including the doodlebug and the V2 rocket. I and a friend spent a fascinating two days wandering round the exhibits. The questions that kept arising were ‘Why did they make it like that?’, or, equivalently ‘I wonder what that is for?’ We were particularly puzzled by a gyroscope in the control system of the V2. One's first assumption was that the gyroscope maintained the rocket on its course, but, instead of being connected to the steering vanes, it was connected to the fuel supply to the rocket. Ultimately my friend (who would have made a better biologist than I) remembered that the rate of precession of a gyro depends on acceleration, and saw that the Germans had used this fact to design an ingenious device for switching off the engines when the required velocity had been reached.

M.O.U.S.E.

Although no details of the proposed artificial satellites are yet available, the idea is by no means new, and it seems likely that any successful experiment of this kind must follow the plans already outlined by Professor S. F. Singer of Maryland University. At the Astronautical Conference at Zürich in 1953 he gave details of a small spherical satellite, weighing only 100 lb., which would revolve about the Earth in a period of 90 minutes at a height of 190 miles above the surface. In collaboration with Arthur C. Clarke and A. V. Cleaver of the British Interplanetary Society, Singer called this instrument MOUSE (Minimum Orbital Unmanned Satellite Earth) and proposed that it should be launched as a three-stage rocket with an initial all-up weight of about 35,000 lb., and a thrust of 65,000 lb., which is very little different from the performance of the V2 rocket. The first step would take the rocket vertically through the lower atmosphere and then turn over to begin the inclined part of its flight; the second stage would come into action when the first had burned out, and complete the climb to give the correct altitude and direction of motion. The third stage would merely give sufficient boost to attain the required speed, which is about 17,400 m.p.h. At the moment of cut-out (controlled from the ground) the nose tip would open and release the satellite. This would take the form of a sphere, about three feet in diameter, spinning so as to maintain a constant orientation, and packed with instruments. The spin axis, parallel to the Earth's surface and perpendicular to the direction of motion, would point to the Sun, so that one half of the sphere would be strongly heated by the Sun's rays, and the other hemisphere would be extremely cold. Power would be obtained from a new type of solar battery, and the readings of the instruments would be radioed continuously to Earth.