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Subject: SPACE Digest V10 #209

SPACE Digest                                     Volume 10 : Issue 209

Today's Topics:
			Confederacy in Space?
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From: PJS@GROUCH.JPL.NASA.GOV (Peter Scott)
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Subject: Confederacy in Space?
Date: 16 Oct 89 22:14:20 GMT
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Offered in the spirit of provoking informative discussion, *not* any
personal attachment to the claims below:

From the JPL _Universe_, October 13:

DID CONFEDERATE ROCKET FIND ITS WAY INTO ORBIT?

Who put the first piece of man-made rocketry or payload into orbit?

There are those who maintain it was the Southern Confederacy during the
Civil War.

The historical research of Burke Davis, author of _Our Incredible Civil
War_ (Ballantine Books, 1960), provides a certain amount of documentation
to support the claim.

Wrote Burke: "A tale even more challenging to the imagination was offered
Southern newspaper readers in 1958 by a Vienna correspondent signing himself
simply as `C.R. Johnson.'  Late in the war, by this story, the Confederacy
launched a two-stage rocket from near Richmond, aiming at Washington, about
one hundred miles away.

"The extraordinary missile was made possible by the work of a secret agent
in England, who persuaded Lord Kelvin to liquefy oxygen (in advance of its
accepted date of development), and enlisted the aid of the great German
physicist, Ernst Mach, who contributed a small turbine and a gyroscopic
stabilizer.  With British-built machinery for liqeufying oxygen nd Mach's
turbine, Confederate experts went to work in a shed on the banks of the
James River.

"A deep hole in the riverbank was fitted with a tube made of dismembered
barrels of naval guns.  The celebrated Matthew Fontaine Maury, father of
modern navigation, calculated the trajectory.

"The rocket itself was to get its original thrust from guncotton fired at
the bottom of the tube, and was made at the huge Tredegar Iron Works in
Richmond.  The missile was trundled through Richmond's streets to the launching
site in early March, 1865.  Men from the Torpedo Bureau worked around the
clock to prepare the rocket; a steam pipe was fed into the launching tube
to provide power for the stabilizing vanes.

"The missile arrive with the letters CSA (Confederate States of America)
cut in the nose cone, and President (Jefferson) Davis and other officials
added their names before firing.

"A network of scounts was spread in the country between Richmond and Washington
as crude tracking station outposts, and when the rocket was fired by an
electrical switch, men ith telescopes saw it roar skyward, lose its first
stage, and disappear from sight.  The first stage, by this account, was
recovered and returned to the torpedo shed.

"A mystery developed: No eye saw the rocket come down, and since record books
were destroyed with the fall of Richmond, the rocket's fate was unknown.
The son of the Confederate agent in England, according to this folklorist
or prankster, is now (circa 1959) in his nineties, and does not wish to
be disturbed by publicity which would attend his producing the authentic
records of this event.  His will, it is said, provides that these be made
public.

"Meanwhile, a fascinated audience ponders the fantastic prospect: Is there,
somewhere in space, a veteran of almost one hundred years as an orbiting
satellite, a missile bearing the outmoded initials CSA?"

Editor's note: Apparently the "authentic records" have not come to light.
[Further information welcomed.]

Peter Scott (pjs@grouch.jpl.nasa.gov)

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End of SPACE Digest V10 #209
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