Kaliningrad

[Drake Tungsten]

I admit that I'm going to bed. Good night.

[Rasbelin]

Yet another helluva of a thread, but a few replies...

Gangerwolf, read at least the first post of this thread, then post. Bye.

Slap and run tactics? Well, traditional Polish tactics maybe.

nah, just switch the whole economy to agriculture and live off subsidies. given the size of the population, that should teach them

This also reminds me of the cheap labour that we will get from Poland to especially Germany. Well, it can be nice indeed, but there's risks too if Germans get less work because of cheap labour.

[The Mad Monk]

Originally posted by Serb


Kibalcich invented the rocket at the end of XIX century.
Tsiolkovsky invented spaceship, spacesuit, and many moe. He launched a bunch of small liquid-fueled rockets(edit: ) rockets and created a theoretical basis of rocketry and cosmonautic in the beggining of XX century- he is the founding father of cosmonautics.
Goddard is the same theif as Marcony- who stole invention of radio from Russian inventor Popov.

This is what I found on Kibalcich:

Kibalchich

In Russia, the ideas of using rocket propulsion for atmospheric flight were reportedly expressed in mid-1800s by I. Tretesky, N. Sokovnin and N. Teleshev.

However, the most famous proposal of this sort was made by Nikolai Kibalchich, an explosives technician from the radical antigovernment organization "Narodnaya Volya". In 1881, during his 17-day incarceration in the Petrapavloskaya Fortress, St. Petersburg, where he was waiting for his execution for his part in the assassination of Emperor Alexander II, Kibalchich sketched and described a manned flight vehicle propelled by a solid-fuel engine.

"While in prison, a few days before my death, I write this project," Kibalchich wrote, "I believe in the reality of my idea and this belief supports me in my terrible situation... If my idea ... is recognized as emplementable, I will be happy with the fact that I have made a huge favor to my native land and to humanity."

In his work, Kibalchich asked a rhetorical question: "What kind of force is applicable to aeronautics. Such force, I believe, is slowly burning explosives."

Kibalchich sketched a hollow metal cylinder with a hole at the bottom. "If the cylinder faces upward with its closed end, then with a certain pressure of the exhaust ... the cylinder should take off."

Kibalchich envisioned the rocket engine attached to a platform via a gymbal-like suspension, which would allow steering the craft by adjusting the direction of thrust of the engine. "I think that in practice, such a task is achievable ... and can be accomplished with modern technology," he wrote. (71)

Two days, before his execution, on March 31, 1881, Kibalchich made an official request to the minister of internal affairs to evaluate his proposal. The request asked for "issuance of a command on permitting an interview with a member of the committee in regard to this project ... or obtaining a written answer from a commission of experts."

On March 26, 1882, almost a year after tragic events of 1881, General Komarov, head of the gendarmes, sent a report to the State Police Department, stating "... I have the honor, in satisfying the appeal of Nikolai Kibalchich, accused of state crimes, to present his plan for an aeronautical device." (122)

However, Kibalchich's project fell victim of a political stigma, tarnishing its author's name. "To give this to scientists for examination will hardly be timely, and may evoke only inappropriate comments," read the note on the package containing the project. The work was put in archive, where it remained untouched until August 1917 -- the year of two Russian revolutions, which toppled centuries-old Tsarist rule and brought Bolsheviks to power.

In March 1918, Nikolai Rynin, a restless propagandist of astronautics, got hold of Kibalchich's manuscript. With Rynin's review, Kibalchich's description of a manned rocket ship appeared in the April 1918 issue of the Byloye ("The Past") magazine.

During the Soviet era, a forgotten manuscript written by Kibalchich metamorphosed into another shot of official propaganda. In the typical extreme of the time, Soviet historians even "documented" how Kibalchich's writing had influenced young Sergei Korolev. Since then, the myth has effectively been debunked by independent researchers. (18)

If this qualifies as 'inventing the rocket', can we celebrate Jules Verne as the inventor of time travel, and Isaac Asimov as the inventor of jump drive?

[Shi Huangdi]

I don't see why anyone would want to take over Russia nowadays anyway. It's a just a ****ty Mafia-ridden country, it would cost an occupier too much money to feed anr provide for the people.

[Seeker]

"IIRC, the Russians already have a missile defense system."

yeah, but it's Russian quality and workmanship (****).

The problem with Russia...is that it's full of Russians.

[Ned]

I say, give Kalingrad a high speed train connecting Kalingrad to Russia. This cannot be a major problem.

[The Mad Monk]

A timeline of rocketry:

Milestones of pre-20th century rocketry:

BC

540: Pythagoras conceives of a counterearth that duplicates the Earth in every respect and moves with it.

384: Aristotle rejects plurality of planets, negatively impacting later thinkers. (148)

360: Hollow model of a pigeon suspended by a string over a flame is made to move by steam issuing from small exhaust ports (described by Aulus Gellius in "Noctes Atticaes" (Attic Nights) (102)

360: Heraclides, of Pontus, conceives of a semigeocentric universe where Mercury and Mars orbit Sun, while all of them orbit Earth.

280: Aristarchus of Samos conceives of a heliocentric universe.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

AD

Circa 62: Hero (or Heron), a Greek resident of Alexandria, invents the "Aeolipile," a hollow sphere with canted nozzles which spins on pivots by the reaction of steam jets. One of the supports on which the sphere rotates is hollow to admit steam generated in a "boiler" supported over fire. (102)


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Circa 850: The Chinese use some form of gunpowder in making fireworks to celebrate religious festivals.

1232: The Chinese successfully withstand the siege by Mongols of the the town of Kai-fung-fu with the help of "arrows of flaming fire." (Historians speculate that these true rockets became possible after the Chinese have discovered how to distill organic saltpetre -- an oxygen producing ingredient -- to increase the rate of burning.)

1242: Roger Bacon, an English Franciscan monk, produces a secret formula for "gunpowder": saltpetre 41.2; charcoal 29.4; sulphur 29.4. To achieve a faster rate of burning, Bacon distills saltpeter -- the oxygen producing ingredient.

1280: Al-Hasan al-Rammah, a Syrian military historian, describes rockets (Chinese arrows) and recipes for making gunpowder in "The Book of Fighting on Horseback and With War Engines."

1379: Gunpowder rockets are used in the siege of Chioggia, near Venice, Italy.

1516: The use of rockets near the Ukrainian city of Belgorod is recorded. (2)

1675: The first appearance of rockets in the Russian city of Ustuyg. (2)

1687: Isaac Newton postulates the Laws of Motion, including his third law which states that "for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction." It becomes the main theoretical principle of jet propulsion.

1680s: The "Rocket Enterprise" (Raketnoe Zavedenie) is founded in Moscow.

1711: Peter the Great founds the Arsenal artillery enterprise in St. Petersburg, which produced rocket devices as early as 1732. (79)

1770: Capt. Thomas Desaguliers examines rockets brought from India in the Royal Laboratory, Woolwich, England, but fails to reproduce reported range or accuracy. (Some would not even lift from their stands)

1780s: Indian ruler Hyder Ali, Prince of Mysore, uses iron-cased rockets with 8-10-feet (2.4 - 3-meters) balancing sticks against troops of the East India Company. The rockets with a weight of 2.7 - 5.4 kilograms have a range of 2.4 kilometers.

1789: Innes Monroe publishes "A Narrative of the Military Operations on the Coromandel Coast," where he describes the 1761 battle of Panipat between British and Indian troops led by Hyder Ali of Mysore. The Indian rocket corps numbering 1,200 men, fired up to 2,000 rockets at the enemy cavalry from a range of 0.8 miles, defeating the British.

1782-1799: In India, during the Third Mysore War, the Indian army uses missiles against the British. Tippu Sultan, the son of Hyder Ali and commander of the Indian army, increased his rocket troops to 5,000 soldiers and equipped them with larger missiles. Before his death at the Battle of Seringapatam in 1799, the troops of Tippu Sultan defeated the British several times.


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19th century

1804: Colonel William Congreve provides specifications for the manufacturing of large rockets at Woolwich, England. Within a year, he produces a 10.9-kilogram rocket with a 1,830-meter range. Later, he develops a 14.5-kilogram iron-cased rockets (107 centimeters long and 10-centimeters in diameter). To increase the range, Congreve creates a faster-burning powder.

1806 Oct. 8: 18 British rocket-carrying boats bombard Boulogne (France) with Congreve missiles during the Napoleonic War. Most missiles overshoot the French battleships, instead starting fires in the coastal town.

1807 Sept. 2-7: British rocket boats attack Copenhagen, Denmark, initiating big fires in the town.

1813: The British Royal Military Academy in Woolwich publishes "A Treatise on the Motion of Rockets" by William Moore. The work includes a mathematical description of rocket trajectories, including their movement in air and vacuum.

1814 Sept. 13-14: The British navy fires Congreve rockets against besieged Fort McHenry, Baltimore, during the War of 1812. The events inspire Francis Scott Key to write the Star Spangled Banner, which became the American national anthem. The song mentions "the rockets' red glare."

1828-29: The Russian Army uses Zasyadko rockets during the Russo-Turkish War.

1840: In England, William Hale, develops spin stabilized rockets, by placing three curved metal vanes in the rocket exhaust. The devices were employed during the Mexican War (1846-48), during the Crimean War (1853-56), in Hungary, Italy, Prussia, and during the American Civil War (1861-65).

1853-56: Russian ships are equipped with rockets during the Crimean War.

1881: While waiting to be executed for his part in the plot to assassinate Czar Alexander II, Nikolai Kibalchich sketched and described a manned flight vehicle propelled by a solid-fuel engine.

1890: In Germany, Hermann Ganswindt proposes a reaction-powered spacecraft propelled by dynamite charges.

Looks to me like the Chinese and Indians beat out everybody in terms of effective use of rockets.

[The Mad Monk]

Originally posted by Serb


Kibalcich invented the rocket at the end of XIX century.
Tsiolkovsky invented spaceship, spacesuit, and many moe. He launched a bunch of small liquid-fueled rockets(edit: ) rockets and created a theoretical basis of rocketry and cosmonautic in the beggining of XX century- he is the founding father of cosmonautics.
Goddard is the same theif as Marcony- who stole invention of radio from Russian inventor Popov.

Here is what I found on Tsiolkovsky:

Today this work and several follow-on articles written in 1911, 1912 and 1914 are universally recognized as the world's first scientifically sound proposals to use rockets for exploring space. For decades afterward the work would stun readers with the completeness and level of detail with which Tsiolkovsky designed his spaceship. The mathematical relation he formulated between the changing mass of a rocket as it burns fuel, the velocity of exhaust gases, and the rocket’s final speed has since become known as Tsiolkovsky’s formula, and is considered one of the foundations of the science of astronautics.

Amazingly, more than two decades before Robert Goddard launched the world’s first liquid-fueled rocket, Tsiolkovsky fueled his theoretical engine with a mix of liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen, the same combination used today on the Space Shuttle, and still considered the most efficient of rocket propellants. Tsiolkovsky arrived at the combination with little hope of testing his theory. He never attempted to build a rocket engine, let alone a spaceship. His discoveries stemmed from a thorough grounding in physics and mathematics, an awareness of the latest achievements in technology (for example, James Dewar first liquefied hydrogen in 1898), and a gift for prediction.

While he certainly had the idea right, he never built an engine, and certainly did not launch 'a bunch of small liquid-fueled rockets'.

Goddard did.

[The Vagabond]

Originally posted by Seeker
"IIRC, the Russians already have a missile defense system."

yeah, but it's Russian quality and workmanship (****).

The problem with Russia...is that it's full of Russians.

What's your problem, Seeker? Can't yet get over that Russian gay guy who fed you free beers? But that's only your fault. You knew perfectly well what he wanted of you. Yet you chose to abuse his hospitality.

*sigh* Canadians:
Not only the gold medals made of tears,
But also an obscene desire for free beers.

[Serb]

Originally posted by The Mad Monk
If this qualifies as 'inventing the rocket', can we celebrate Jules Verne as the inventor of time travel, and Isaac Asimov as the inventor of jump drive?

Language barrier.
In Russian word "raketa" (a rocket) means the same as "kosmichesky korabl" (a spaceship). All our spaceships with exception of Buran were in fact rockets. So, I meant "manned spaceship" of course, because rockets were invented by Chenese hell knows how many time ago. Are you deny that he was the first guy who offered the idea of such vehicle?

And sure Azimov is inventor of jump drive.

[Serb]

Originally posted by The Mad Monk


Here is what I found on Tsiolkovsky:

You aren't a lazy guy, aren't you?

While he certainly had the idea right, he never built an engine, and certainly did not launch 'a bunch of small liquid-fueled rockets'.

Give my some time I'll try to find something for you. I'm absolutely sure I've read somewhere that he launched a whole bunch of small rockets.

Goddard did.

Good for him. As you pointed, bunch of people all around the world used rockets (sure a bit different), but did they or Goddard knew exactly why their rockets fly? Why they fly in that way, not the other? Did they had theoretical basement which expalain it? Did they had theoretical basement for manned space flight and had proves that such flights are possible?
I doubt.

[Serb]

Originally posted by The Vagabond


What's your problem, Seeker? Can't yet get over that Russian gay guy who fed you free beers? But that's only your fault. You knew perfectly well what he wanted of you. Yet you chose to abuse his hospitality.

*sigh* Canadians:
Not only the gold medals made of tears,
But also an obscene desire for free beers.

I guess it isn't a full story. Perhaps he just don't tell us what happent next?

[Serb]

Originally posted by Shi Huangdi
I don't see why anyone would want to take over Russia nowadays anyway. It's a just a ****ty Mafia-ridden country, it would cost an occupier too much money to feed anr provide for the people.

1) Look at your country first. The biggest bunch of mafiamans you could see in white house. Bandits of world's scale, thugs who want to murder thousands just to make American cars to run on a bit cheaper gas.
2) ****ty person you can see in the mirror, every time you look on it.
3) you
4) Have a nice day.

[Serb]

Originally posted by Seeker
The problem with Russia...is that it's full of Russians.

The problem with Canada is that it is a second largest country in the world, but have the same population as Austria.

Another problem that you are whining, Olympic gold theives. You crying like babies- "mammy give me my candy back.

And the last problem that you have plans to invade USA, but don't have balls to launch an invasion. Really pathetic.

I wish you to have a nice day too.

[The Mad Monk]

Serb, I do not know about Russia, but here in the States a claim for having invented something generally requires the presentation of a working model.