Conference 7.286::space

569.0. "A Confederate Space Rocket?" by CLIPR::KLAES (N = R*fgfpneflfifaL) Tue Oct 17 1989 12:33

From: [email protected] (Peter Scott)
Newsgroups: sci.space
Subject: Confederacy in Space?
Date: 16 Oct 89 22:14:20 GMT
 
    Offered in the spirit of provoking informative discussion, *not*
any personal attachment to the claims below: 
 
    From the Jet Propulsion Laboratory publication UNIVERSE, October 13, 
 1989: 
 
    Did Confederate Rocket Find Its Way Into Orbit?
 
    Who put the first piece of man-made rocketry or payload into orbit?
 
    There are those who maintain it was the Southern Confederacy
during the American Civil War of 1861-1865. 
 
    The historical research of Burke Davis, author of OUR INCREDIBLE
CIVIL WAR (Ballantine Books, 1960), provides a certain amount of
documentation to support the claim. 
 
    Wrote Burke:  "A tale even more challenging to the imagination was
offered Southern newspaper readers in 1958 by a Vienna correspondent
signing himself simply as `C. R. Johnson.'  Late in the war, by this
story, the Confederacy launched a two-stage rocket from near Richmond,
aiming at Washington, D.C., about one hundred miles away. 
 
    "The extraordinary missile was made possible by the work of a
secret agent in England, who persuaded Lord Kelvin to liquefy oxygen
(in advance of its accepted date of development), and enlisted the aid
of the great German physicist, Ernst Mach, who contributed a small
turbine and a gyroscopic stabilizer.  With British-built machinery for
liquefying oxygen and Mach's turbine, Confederate experts went to work
in a shed on the banks of the James River. 
 
    "A deep hole in the riverbank was fitted with a tube made of
dismembered barrels of naval guns.  The celebrated Matthew Fontaine
Maury, father of modern navigation, calculated the trajectory. 
 
    "The rocket itself was to get its original thrust from guncotton
fired at the bottom of the tube, and was made at the huge Tredegar
Iron Works in Richmond.  The missile was trundled through Richmond's
streets to the launching site in early March, 1865.  Men from the
Torpedo Bureau worked around the clock to prepare the rocket; a steam
pipe was fed into the launching tube to provide power for the
stabilizing vanes. 
 
    "The missile arrive with the letters CSA (Confederate States of
America) cut in the nose cone, and President (Jefferson) Davis and
other officials added their names before firing. 
 
    "A network of scouts was spread in the country between Richmond
and Washington as crude tracking station outposts, and when the rocket
was fired by an electrical switch, men with telescopes saw it roar
skyward, lose its first stage, and disappear from sight.  The first
stage, by this account, was recovered and returned to the torpedo shed. 
 
    "A mystery developed:  No eye saw the rocket come down, and since
record books were destroyed with the fall of Richmond, the rocket's
fate was unknown.  The son of the Confederate agent in England,
according to this folklorist or prankster, is now (circa 1959) in his
nineties, and does not wish to be disturbed by publicity which would
attend his producing the authentic records of this event.  His will,
it is said, provides that these be made public. 
 
    "Meanwhile, a fascinated audience ponders the fantastic prospect:
Is there, somewhere in space, a veteran of almost one hundred years as
an orbiting satellite, a missile bearing the outmoded initials CSA?" 
 
    Editor's note:  Apparently the "authentic records" have not come to
 light. [Further information welcomed.] 
 
    Peter Scott ([email protected])

    I imagine the reason that the rocket never returned to Earth was
    because of the Space Aliens who were sympathetic to the Union.  
    I understand that they intercepted the rocket during the Civil War and 
    were recently exposed while trying sell it to a TASS reporter in the 
    Soviet Union.
                                 :')