Hermann Oberth was a German rocket scientist who in 1923 wrote Die Rakete zu den Planetenräumen (The Rocket into Interplanetary Space) that first described the basic principles of spaceflight. Along with Konstantin Tsiolkovsky and Robert Goddard, Oberth is considered to be one of the founding fathers of modern rocketry and astronautics. However, the three were never active collaborators: instead, their parallel achievements occurred independently of one another. 

By his own account and that of many others, around the age of eleven Oberth became fascinated with the field in which he was to make his mark through the writings of Jules Verne, especially From the Earth to the Moon and Around the Moon, re-reading them to the point of memorization. Influenced by Verne's books and ideas, Oberth constructed his first model rocket as a school student of 14. In his youthful experiments, he arrived independently at the concept of the multistage rocket, but lacked, at the time, the resources to pursue his idea on any but a theoretical level.

In 1912, Oberth undertook the study of medicine in Munich but at the outbreak of World War I he was drafted in an Imperial German infantry battalion and sent to the Eastern Front; in 1915 he was moved to a medical unit in a hospital in Sighişoara, Transylvania. Here he initially conducted a series of experiments concerning weightlessness and later resumed his rocket designs. By 1917, he showed what his studies were about and what would become a shooting missile with liquid propellant to Hermann von Stein, the Prussian Minister of War.

In 1928 and 1929 Oberth worked in Berlin as a scientific consultant on the first film ever to have scenes set in space, Frau im Mond ("The Woman in the Moon"), directed at Universum Film AG by Fritz Lang. The film was of enormous value in popularizing the idea of rocket science. Oberth's main task was to build and launch a rocket as a publicity event prior to the film's premiere. On 5 June 1929, Oberth won the first REP-Hirsch Prize of the French Astronomical Society for his Encouragement of Astronautics in his book Wege zur Raumschiffahrt (Ways to Spaceflight) that expanded Die Rakete zu den Planetenräumen to a full-length book.

Oberth promoted space travel in the 1930s, and joined his former student Wernher von Braun at the V2 rocket complex near Peenemünde, Germany, developing a rocket for the German army during World War II. After the war, Oberth joined von Braun at the U.S. Army Ballistic Missile Agency in Huntsville, Alabama, and later returned to Germany to continue writing on rocketry and space travel.

In his book Menschen im Weltraum (Man in Space), published in 1953, Oberth described his ideas for a space-based reflecting telescope, a space station, an electric spaceship, and space suits. In the 1950s and 1960s, Oberth offered his opinions regarding unidentified flying objects; he was a supporter of the extraterrestrial hypothesis. For example, in an article in The American Weekly, 24 October 1954, he stated: "It is my thesis that flying saucers are real and that they are space ships from another solar system. I think that they possibly are manned by intelligent observers who are members of a race that may have been investigating our earth for centuries..."

The 1973 energy crisis inspired Oberth to look at alternative energy sources, including a plan for a wind power station that could utilize the jet stream.

Oberth died on December 28, 1989 but is memorialized by the Hermann Oberth Space Travel Museum in Feucht, Germany, and by the Hermann Oberth Society, which brings together scientists, researchers and astronauts from East and West in order to carry on his work in rocketry and space exploration.

Sources

• Cleveland, Cutler (Lead Author); Peter Saundry (Topic Editor). 2007. "Oberth, Hermann." In: Encyclopedia of Earth. Eds. Cutler J. Cleveland (Washington, D.C.: Environmental Information Coalition, National Council for Science and the Environment). [Published in the Encyclopedia of Earth March 19, 2007; Retrieved September 17, 2009]. 
• Wikipedia Contributors, Hermann Oberth, Wikipedia The Free Encyclopedia, Accessed 17 September 2009.