The Guggenheim Aeronautics Laboratory at Caltech and the creation of the modern rocket motor (1936-1946): How the dynamics of rocket theory became reality.
Item
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Title
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The Guggenheim Aeronautics Laboratory at Caltech and the creation of the modern rocket motor (1936-1946): How the dynamics of rocket theory became reality.
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Identifier
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AAI9917721
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identifier
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9917721
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Creator
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Zibit, Benjamin Seth.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Joseph Warren Dauben
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Date
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1999
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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History of Science | History, United States | Engineering, Aerospace
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Abstract
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This thesis explores and unfolds the story of discovery in rocketry at The California Institute of Technology---specifically at Caltech's Guggenheim Aeronautics Laboratory---in the 1930s and 1940s. Caltech was home to a small group of engineering students and experimenters who, beginning in the winter of 1935--1936, formed a study and research team destined to change the face of rocket science in the United States. The group, known as the Guggenheim Aeronautics Laboratory (GALCIT, for short) Rocket Research Group, invented a new type of solid-rocket propellant, made distinct and influential discoveries in the theory of rocket combustion and design, founded the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and incorporated the first American industrial concern devoted entirely to rocket motor production: The Aerojet Corporation.;The theoretical work of team members, Frank Malina, Hsueh-shen Tsien, Homer J. Stewart, and Mark Mills, is examined in this thesis in detail. The author scrutinizes Frank Malina's doctoral thesis (both its assumptions and its mathematics), and finds that, although Malina's key assertions, his formulae, hold, his work is shown to make key assumptions about rocket dynamics which only stand the test of validity if certain approximations, rather than exact measurements, are accepted. Malina studied the important connection between motor-nozzle design and thrust; in his Ph.D. thesis, he developed mathematical statements which more precisely defined the design/thrust relation.;One of Malina's colleagues on the Rocket Research Team, John Whiteside Parsons, created a new type of solid propellant in the winter of 1941--1942. This propellant, known as a composite propellant (because it simply was a relatively inert amalgam of propellant and oxidizer in non-powder form), became the forerunner of all modern solid propellants, and has become one of the seminal discoveries in the field of Twentieth Century rocketry.;The latter chapters of this dissertation discuss the creation of the jet Propulsion Laboratory, the founding of the Aerojet Corporation, and emphasizes the issue of JPL's close relation to military development of the rocket becomes a core subject of this thesis. Cooperation between engineers in an academic setting and the military was not merely inevitable in the 1940s---it was actively fostered and proved quite profitable to all concerned. The deep relationship between the Guggenheim Aeronautics Laboratory and the Army Air Force was one model of the evolution of a permanent institutional edifice, weaving academic research and military end-use together.;The dissertation concludes that what began as a modest effort to understand rocket theory in greater depth led within ten years to both research and development tracks which have profoundly altered the technological and military definition of modern history.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
