Walter Hohmann

Walter Hohmann ( born March 18 1880 in Hard home in the Odenwald, † March 11, 1945 in Essen ) was a German structural engineer and is considered one of the pioneers of space travel.

Life

Hohmann was the son of a doctor. He spent his childhood in hardware and home in Port Elizabeth in South Africa. From 1891 he attended the Humanistic Gymnasium in Würzburg. After graduation, he studied civil engineering at the Technical University in Munich. After graduation, he worked from 1904 as engineer for structural analysis in Vienna, Berlin, Hannover and Wroclaw. In 1912 he was city architect in Essen Head of the Department of the static planning authority and founded the Material Testing Laboratory of the city of Essen. In 1916 he submitted his dissertation, a Test on the interaction between old and new concrete in reinforced concrete structures at the RWTH Aachen, because of that war and postwar conditions, the Promotion, however, until 1920 took place.

In addition to his professional Hohmann questions of celestial mechanics and space turned to. He averaged over the years 1911-1915, which properties must have a rocket-powered spaceship to go with the least expenditure of energy to other planets. He looked next to the problem of achieving the escape velocity and the re-entry into Earth's atmosphere. In 1925 he published his work in the factory, the accessibility of the heavenly bodies. The ideas presented herein have been partially received in the Apollo program for manned moon landing later. The work was translated into English in 1938 and into Russian.

Hohmann died on March 11, 1945, completely exhausted by continuous air alarms and bomb attacks in a hospital in Essen. His final resting place he found in the cemetery at the Meisenburgstraße in Essen- Bredeney.

Aftereffect

Hohmann's work, the accessibility of the celestial bodies (1925 ) is considered the first mathematically sound presentation of the elementary principles of the space rail technology.

In memory of the space pioneer is a street in the center of Essen and the observatory in food after named him (Walter - Hohmann- road and Walter Hohmann Observatory ). It is one operated by a non-profit organization Public Observatory in Schuir district, which also participates in the asteroid research. The observatory was founded by a small group of interested citizens astronomically in 1969. Since 1971 it is called Walter Hohmann Observatory Essen eV

In hardware home there is the Astronomy Working Group Walter Hohmann Observatory, the Walter - Hohmann- school center and the Walter - Hohmann- height. At the height of a model of Ariane 5 rocket was erected in 1:4 scale in honor of Walter Hohmann, 2012. 1970 was a crater near the edge on the moon back in recognition of his outstanding scientific achievements his name.

Works

• The accessibility of the heavenly bodies. Oldenbourg Verlag, Munich 1925
• Routes, journey times, landing opportunities in Willy Ley (eds.): The possibilities of space travel, Hachmeister and Thal, Leipzig 1928
• The accessibility of the heavenly bodies, Oldenbourg Verlag, Munich 1994. Supplemented reprint of the original edition. ISBN 3-486-23106-5