Hermann Oberth
1894 – 1989
Spaceflight theorist who taught von Braun's generation.
A founding father of rocketry, the Transylvanian-German Oberth published the theory of spaceflight in the 1920s that inspired a generation — including the young Wernher von Braun, who became his assistant.
The rocket-equation tools here trace through Oberth to the Huntsville program he helped seed. He later consulted at Redstone Arsenal itself.
Portrait: a stylized blueprint-line rendering, not a photograph.
Contributions in the toolbox
- 1923
'Die Rakete zu den Planetenräumen' — the German school begins.
→ Tsiolkovsky Rocket Equation - 1923
The book that made orbital mechanics a movement.
→ Hohmann Transfer