Product Code Database
Georg Arthur Constantin Friedrich Zander (also Tsander; ; ; – 28 March 1933) was a Russian and Soviet pioneer of and spaceflight, of Baltic German descent. He designed the first liquid rocket to be launched in the Soviet Union, GIRD-X, and made many important theoretical contributions to the road to space.
He graduated with his engineering degree in 1914, moved to Moscow in 1915. He worked at the "Provodnik" rubber plant, then in 1919 worked at Aircraft Factory No. 4 ("Motor"). In 1923, he was married to A.F. Milyukova, and they had a daughter named Astra and a son named Mercury. Mercury died of scarlet fever in 1929. After several years of unemployment and intensive research on rocketry and space travel, in 1926, Zander began work at the Central Design Bureau of Aviation, and in 1930 worked at the Central Institute of Aviation Motor Construction (TsIAM).Tsander, FA, "Autobiography of Fridrikh Arturovich Tsander, Production Engineer" (in Russian), March 12, 1927.Petrovich, G.V. (2002) The Soviet Encyclopedia of Space Flight. University Press of the Pacific. p. 468.
1924 was a particularly active year for Zander. The year before, Hermann Oberth had published the influential theoretical work "Die Rakete zu den Planetenräumen" ("The rocket to interplanetary space"), which in turn introduced Zander and other Russian enthusiasts to the ground breaking work by Robert Goddard ("A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes" published in 1919). Zander took advantage of this by promoting Tsiolkovsky's work, and developing it further. Together with Vladimir Vetchinkin and members of a rocketry club at the airforce academy, he founded the Society for Studies of Interplanetary Travel. In an early publication, they would be the first to suggest using the Earth's atmosphere as a way of aerobraking a re-entry spacecraft. The same year, Zander lodged a patent in Moscow for a winged rocket that he believed would be suitable for interplanetary flight, and in late 1924 and early 1925, he gave lectures in Moscow and other Russian cities on the possibility of interplanetary travel.
Around this time, Zander became the first to suggest the solar sail as a means of spacecraft propulsion, although Johannes Kepler had suggested a solar wind sail in the 17th century.
In 1925, Zander presented a paper, "Problems of flight by jet propulsion: interplanetary flights," in which he suggested that a spacecraft traveling between two planets could be accelerated at the beginning of its trajectory and decelerated at the end of its trajectory by using the gravity of the two planets' moons — a method known as gravity assist.Zander‘s 1925 paper, “Problems of flight by jet propulsion: interplanetary flights,” was translated by NASA. See NASA Technical Translation F-147 (1964); specifically, Section 7: Flight Around a Planet’s Satellite for Accelerating or Decelerating Spaceship, pp. 290-292. Zander showed his deep understanding of the physics behind the concept and he foresaw the advantage it could play for interplanetary travels, with a vision far ahead of his contemporaries.
In 1929–1930, while at the IAM, Zander worked on his first engine, OR-1, which ran on compressed air and gasoline and was based on a modified blowtorch. He also taught courses at the Moscow Aviation Institute during this time. In 1931, Zander was a founding member of GIRD (Group for the Study of Reactive Motion) in Moscow. As head of brigade no. 1, Zander worked on the OR-2 (GIRD-02) rocket engine, to power the "216" winged cruise missile. He also worked on the engine and rocket GIRD-10, which flew successfully on 25 November 1933. Zander had designed the rocket, but did not live to see it fly, having died of typhus in March of that year in the city of Kislovodsk.
|
|
