Eugene Sanger also began dreaming of spaceflight at an early age. However he did not dream of traveling through space in Rocketships. His plan was to increase the abilities of aircraft until they could fly out of the atmosphere.

 He became the first person to scientifically investigate the evolutionary idea of extending the flight of airplanes into space.  Eugene Sanger was a quiet but competent researcher who believed that evolving airplanes into spaceships while retaining their wings would yield a great advantage for long distant rocket flights in the future.  Sanger also made the development of the rocket plane the subject of his doctoral thesis, however, it too was rejected by the educational establishment. 

Still he continued pursuing his dream. He studied the problems, wrote the very first professional textbook on rocket powered flight and developed the solutions that would eventually be used for post-war rocket plane development.

His research may not have produced anything had he not come to the attention of the German Luftwaffe who assigned Sanger to the secret German aviation research Center.  There he began testing large rocket engines in an attempt to produce one with 100 tons of thrust.  He did some of the first research on high altitude rocket performance.  At the same time he also worked on the aerodynamic design for his rocket plane. 

As war became evident, the mission for his Silver Bird went from visiting space stations in orbit to being a rocket bomber to bomb New York City.  To this end he developed the concept of skipping along the top of the atmosphere in order to extend the range of his rocket plane. This way it could reach the US, bomb New York, and return to Germany. 

His research continued through the war and the results were finally included in an August 1944 report “A Rocket Drive for Long-Range Bombers.” It was not until after the war that validation of his theories gave him the recognition that he deserved for his pioneering work.  While the Silver Bird itself never flew, today, we can see many of its pioneering influences in other space planes. 

The space shuttle owns much of its design to the pioneering work of Eugene Sanger on the Silver Bird.

  Links to Additional information available in the Trade Zone.

 A Precision Design Drawing of this Spaceship  -----------------------------------------

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Complete background information is available in the Spaceship Handbook

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This Spaceship is also featured in “Ad Astra per Aspera”

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