The riddle of the V2 rocket shape
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- čas přidán 1. 07. 2024
- The V2 rocket is instantly recognisable by its extraordinary shape. But where did this revolutionary body shape come from, and why has it not been seen again in missile design since the 1950s? And yet, paradoxically, the shape in stylised form appears on millions of internet pages - why?
We continue exploring the A4 / V2 rocket in detail by looking at the surprising origins of the V2's core body shape. The first designs of the A3 and A5, both prototypes of the A4, had ballistic features emanating from the early 20th-century science of ballistics that the A4 would inherit. But crucially, some elements would change due to a supersonic flow theory revolution in 1930s America.
00:00 Introduction
03:09 V2 rocket shape
05:45 The chubby rocket
09:33 Defining the ogives
12:20 Getting it wrong
14:39 It's a bullet!
20:25 Handbook of Ballistics
23:02 Heydenreich ogive rule
28:15 Torpedo of 1744
29:24 Ballistics era
35:05 Dr Hermann and A3
38:09 The Windtunnel
47:55 Kurzweg's rocket
53:29 Von Kármán
56:49 Haack's paper of '41
1:00:34 Inside the outside
1:04:23 Summary
1:05:35 The V2's ghost in art & culture
1:11:34 Mole bunker?
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Literature
Cranz C.J. and Becker K. E. (1921) The Handbook of Ballastics, (pp. 75-82) Eng. ED HMSO London.
Neufeld M.J. (1995) The Rocket and the Reich, (pp. 5-28,42,50-54,73,82-85,97,113-127, 275-278, 285,292) Simon & Schuster Inc. New York
Siegmund-Schultze R. (2003) Military Work in Mathematics 1914-1945. Ch. Wolfgang Haack 1902-1994 [Source: Haack (1987), p. 23]
Haack W. (1941) Geschoßformen kleinsten Wellenwilderstandes, Der Lilienthal-Gesellschaft
Von Kármán T. and Moore N.E. (1932) Resistance of slender bodies moving with supersonic velocities, with special reference to projectiles ASME APM-54-27
Kurzweg H.H. Chapter 5: Aerodynamic Development of the V-2. In: Benecke, T and Quick, A (Eds). History of German Guided Missiles Development. Brunswick, Germany, 1957
Lundquist C.A., Coleman A.M. (2008) Rudolf Hermann, wind tunnels and aerodynamics (Acta Astronautica: Elsevier Science Vol 62, issue 8-9)
Written and presented by Robert J Dalby FRAS
Produced by Astronomy and Nature TV - Věda a technologie
Great presentation, no wonder I don’t watch TV anymore.
If a TV channel, such as Discovery, or History, wanted to be successful again. All they need to do is sign a deal with the top 100 CZcams content creators. It doesn't have to be weekly. Just a monthly segment in a weekly show.
You printed it ?
Excellent technical explanation of early rocket dynamics. My dad, who, became the Chief Scientist at Edwards AFB in the 60's tried to interest me in scientific research at an early age, guiding me to create a parabolic solar boiler in 6th grade, a geotropism experiment in 7th grade, and a smoke tunnel aerodynamics project in 8th grade. As it turned out, I choose to follow Chelsey Bonestell and become an artist and musician, always with great respect for the math abilities of scientists and engineers.
Thanx.. My Dad was a jazz musician who built the Norden Bombsight tools with a top secret clearance during the War........
One of my music teachers described music as applied mathematics and physics with feeling. Always loved that way of approaching it.
Time is related to speed which is related to distance. You can't have music without periodicity and timing.
cool story bro, shocked an artist could respect anyone who enjoys math. those science projects really impacted your life. what did you do in 9th grade?
@@eastockerable you just can't help but try to outdo someone whenever you get the chance? thanx... .... you too .............. ..........
What a treat! A new video from Robert.
Wow, I had no idea the middle section was perfectly straight! Even after you demonstrate it, the minute you put it back together I see it as curved again. It's a really strong optical illusion!
I am sure it was the model that inspired Hergé for his rocket in "Destination Moon"(Objectif Lune,1950)
I always think of tintin's rocket when I see the space x starship, they look very similar to a layman like me.
...and Hergé confirmed that it did... Love the TinTin and Milou comics... ❤❤❤
Pleasantly surprised at the topic and excited to get another rich slice of this fascinating history! Thanks RJD
Wow the production value is through the roof! I’m half way through and keep getting surprised by graphic transitions, in-the-field video, and great audio cues
Finally the series goes on and on and on.
I'm beyond glad I found this. Very smart. No frills.
It's midnight and I'm watching this instead of asian baseball cheerleaders and bodycam videos. Accidentally learned something. Amazing work.
Too long to finish watching on my Lunch Break, I'll definitely come back for the rest. Up to about the 25 minute mark, the discussion of Ogive shapes, rifle bullets are usually about a 6 ogive, some peak out around 8, the only way to get sharper ogives and still fit the form factor of most gun systems is to use tangent ogives. FWIW, the original WW1 7.92 ball ammo was a 196gr Boat Tailed bullet, by WW2 it had shifted to a 150gr, this was to reduce recoil, however the 192gr bullet was retained for machine gun use. I will add more commentary as I finish the video. Great vid, much enjoyed.
I have never seen so much work into a video by editing and comprehensive explanation! Good job!
So fascinating and informative! Some mortar bombs have a similar shape, but with an extended tail to store propellant, and more numerous smaller fins to fit within the bore diameter.
I never really thought about how far back that sort of mortar bomb shape goes, but looking it up I think it's definitely more modern than the V2.
Thumbs up before the video began to play. Now, this comment as the first minute finishes. Your A4 content is AMAZING and I can not get enough of it. Even if I have to wait years for another sometimes. Thank you so much for making this content! You are one of the only channels I have set to all alerts.
"Television" at its absolute best. I listened in on one go and it went by in minutes, it seemed. I really enjoyed this. More importantly I learned a great deal, but even more important than that I got to thinking tangentially on my little personal area of knowledge. Priceless. Thank you!
This is wonderful content. I really appreciate how you show all the details related to how to perform the measurements and calculations and the origin of the work from the 20s. Very insightful and subscribed for future content.
Best thing I have ever seen on CZcams. For sure.
Fantastic work! Nicely done!
Truly excellent work. Not only a treasure trove of information but hugely entertaining as well. I have a deep affection for that V2 shape and unconsciously used it in some of my creations. I expected to see the rocket from the first Wallace and Gromit feature 'A grand day out' but I think you showed enough examples as is. Keep up the great work:)
Agreed, W&G are a big miss here - definitely would have helped lighten the mood a little!
YES!!! ANOTHER INSTALLMENT. I love when you upload
My goodness, that was thorough - and fascinating! Thanks.
Stellar presentation!
This was great! I love your videos and the depth you go to in exploring this material. Keep up the good work!
Loved the density of information and rare historical materials. Excellent format, much appreciated.
So much better than I was expecting. Excellent work, well researched and beautifully explained.
I really enjoy your videos and how in-depth your analysis goes. You can't find this kind of quality anywhere else. Well done. Please keep making videos. The V1, V2 and any WW2 tech in particular is very interesting to me.
Another great video, to go with your amazing exposition of the V-2 turbo-pump. One anecdote I have either heard of or read about the fins on the V-2 may be of interest. When the ABMA engineers were doing the initial work on the Redstone, they were running into a brick wall over the tail fin design. No aerodynamic analysis ever came up with a fin shape such as the V-2 had: short span, very long chord. So they finally asked Von Braun about it. He replied that the short span was dictated by the fact that the V-2 had to be transported through existing railroad tunnels, and that, in turn, required the chord to be lengthened to provide the needed tail volume. Tail fins had a varied history in the American space program. Atlas and Titan II had none - their control systems were sufficiently high powered. In the Saturn family, the Saturn I and I-B are occasionally seen without tail fins. Those were all unmanned flights. The Saturn V had its four huge fins mounted on the engine fairing cones, yet the rocket was aerodynamically unstable at all but one instant during flight. At 60 seconds, the aerodynamic center of pressure exactly hit the center of mass. Before and after that, the CP was forward of the CG. Von Braun commented on this, noting that the fins were there for a failure mode in which one of the outboard F-1 engine's thrust vector actuators failed in the "hard-over" position (it was apparently the worst control failure they could imagine). The Saturn would immediately begin to pitch, but the fins would slow it down for long enough that the astronauts could activate the Launch Escape System, and get safely away. Von Braun noted that fins large enough to ensure aerodynamic stability would be so large and heavy that they would make the Saturn unable to perform a Moon landing mission. Today, control systems have been perfected to the point where aerodynamics can be practically neglected during boost. Unless it's on a Proton with a gyro wired up backwards....
Many thanks Robert for this excellent addition to the V2 design history.
fantastic presentation, loved every minute, keep them coming.
This was extremely interesting! The wind tunnel information was fascinating! A deep, deep dive!
OMG. This just popped up in my feed. Gonna grab a beer and settle down for what I know will be a brilliant vid. Thanks as always Robert. 😃
11:07 - what a beautifull and simple explanation !
If you have not mowed the grass in a few weeks, then grab a handful of grass and arrange the blades of grass according to length on a piece of paper. It will form an Ogive curve. This was an assignment when I took Probability and Statistics with Calculus while in college.
As the great Haffaz Aladeen once said “The rocket is not pointy enough!”
Wow, what a well researched and presented Video. Great work!
You make fantastic programmes. I'm always impressed.
Great work! The video was very informative and extremely entertaining.
I didn't expect to learn so much about the shape of the fist rocket. Amazing presentation and delivery
A man who loves to say "Tangent radius ogive double ended torpedo shape" and who can blame him.
Oh yes. I would’ve described it more as a “Sears-Haack body” or basically the shape with lowest supersonic drag.
"The shape is a spherical tangent radius ogive double-ended torpedo".
If one looks from above at the outline of a birch bark canoe as fabricated by eastern Native American tribal folks the V2 conic sections are more pointy and considerably longer but otherwise the overall shape is similar. Reducing drag has been a primary design requirement for centuries. (Millennia?)
Fantastic video!
Thanks Robert for a brilliant new video in the fascinating topic of V2
Fantastic presentation. Thank you.
I should really put this on your gyroscope V2 page but I thought I'd mentioned a couple things. You say it used a rheostat to read out the angle but the one in the picture was actually a variable capacitor. The advantage of that is that it can be used as a non-contact position indicator. What I really wanted to talk about was the electronic analog computer that was used between the gyroscopes and the fins. The original system tried to use a mechanical connection between the gyroscopes and the fins. This worked very poorly and almost caused the idea rocket to be scarped. The mechanical system was difficult to tune and had poor fine feedback. One of the engineers designed the remarkable analog tube computer that allowed the fine tuning of the feedback to match the mass and reaction time of the rocket. The most remarkable part was the use of AC amplifiers that could cancel out the DC drift that a typical DC amplifier would have created,over the time of flight of the rocket. The AC was also better for the variable capacitor used on the gyros. There is a paper the designer later published on the control computer. If I find it again I'll post it to you. It is a little complicated be really a most remarkable design.
Legendary. Great work. We need more. 😁
Beautiful work
This is awesome! Here’s a personal story I hope will put a smile on your face.
As a kid, one of my favorite toys was a water and air-powered plastic rocket. You had to pump it up by hand like a bicycle tire.
As an adult, I somehow managed to become god friends with my childhood hero, who was a rocket scientist who had design oversight over all Apollo electronics and Werner on speed dial. So rockets have been on my brain just about forever.
Yet it wasn’t until 1:10:50 that I finally remembered that little rocket, and the suddenly exclaimed OH! when I realized it had that stubby double ogive shape.
Thank you so much for an awesome lesson and an even better memory.
HA! just reminded me of the last time i shot my air/water red rocket toy outside my folks home one sunny summer day. . . launched straight up with such a force . . . and then in horror, curved ~90 degrees and crashed straight into my sister's 2nd story bedroom window, remaining stuck in the window shooting out its remaining water getting everyone soaked... yep, exciting times my childhood was! ( will confess i did pump it up whaaay too much! ) on a side note learned how to cut window glass and apply window putty as Dad did the repairs.
the amount of work you have put in this video is truly amazing and im still around the middlepoint
My advisor at school was the chief aerodynamicist on the V2, Rudolph Herman.
Fascinating, would have loved to have seen his commentary on this video
@@catfunt5583 Rudolph Herman was the guy who build the Windtunnel, not a Nazi guy.
super presentation. Apart from the technical aspects I loved the explanation of Peenemunde with superimposed images. Excellent.
Thank you for a great informative video. Cheers.
Your love and dedication in your videos is worth the love and dedication of the engineers who developed such marvelous things. They ought to be proud of you
Exellent!
I visited peenemunde in 2019.
The museum was very informative.
There was a lot of technical information on both V1 and V2.
Thanks for a nice series of videos....!
Great.👍!
Man you rule, I love your videos 🎉🎉🎉best regards from Brazil
Wow, excellent analysis and presentation indeed!
I think another important feature of sucessors rockets to the V2 was also detchable warheads that no longer needed the body to survive re-entry. Aerodynmic concerns become limited to boost phase only.
Brilliant, just brilliant! Thank you so much!
Brilliant .... as always !!
Nice work
A fantastic presentation.
Best episode yet! Was expecting the term “ballistic coefficient” to make an appearance, but I’m guessing that came later. Thank you.
Superb!
Another great video from what is an under-appreciated CZcams Channel, imho. 👏👏👏
Excellent video. Actual research, not just speculation about the shape. I was a bit critical about length and repetitiveness in "Turbopump Part 2", but this one is just about perfect.
Learned a lot here.
So, these bullet / torpedo shape is more of a (pretty good) approximation of the perfect low drag shape, but in the end other features were more important than lowest drag shape.
It is fascinating, that they stuck to the early shape, more as a precaution, and focused on other elements instead. I have no idea how would they even exactly manufacture these radii, because they are not just cones.
Also, now I would not be able to unsee V2 in all the icons and logos.
You have skills as an engineer and story teller. Somewhat rare to have both. Absolutely love your videos.
This was a great video.
Amazing research! Thanks!!!
Thank you for this lesson!
Very, VERY, good🧠👍
Insights - incredible & vital.
Hell yeah! Can't wait to get home and watch it!
Excellent - very interesting. Thanks.
Absolutely loved this, thank you for making these Robert! I was half expecting Wallace & Gromit’s appearance…
Another outstanding lecture from Robert Dalby. Thanks again. Greetings from Brazil.
Heads up, you have a fair bit of high frequency noise in the introduction section of the video where you are speaking on the set.
Thank you for reviving my interest in math and design
Amazing videos! I feel like I was attending a University Lecture! Keep them coming!!
Yay! I love these videos!
Hes back!!!! A new video~!!!!!!!! YES YES YES!!!!
Well researched and presented! There's an awful lot to take on board here but the content was so good that I couldn't bring myself to pause. Perhaps the video should have been made in 2 or 3 parts?
Thanks once again for a very interesting and detailed document around the shape of the V2. I have recently made a model of the Horton HO 229 with a 3d printer. It’s flying wing swallow shaped body has so many complex curves. I can imagine models at the time being tested through this wind tunnel.
Fantastic, thank you.
Superb research!
Fascinating
Awesome, thanks!
That was a truly brilliant video. Yoiur simulated google streeet view of Peenemunde was absolutely fantastic. 11 out of 10.
👍👍Excellent video...
Great video.
I love the vacuum sphere and the wind tunnel. Amazing !
Greetings from France
Excellent video...👍
Excellent documentary 😊❤
This guy owes me a model V2!
I had one I was completely happy with, and now I know it isn't the correct shape, and I can't look at it the same.
Great video!
Really wish you'd a series on the Herman Goering Institute outside Braunschweig. Almost all survived the war due to secrecy and camoflauge.
Great video! lMay I know if the V2 museum you run is still open, and if so it's address?
42:59 "this took about a minute"
That seems to me an awfully short time to fully evacuate such a large vacuum vessel. I would have guessed something in the region of "a couple of hours".
Is the 1 minute correct?
Which in turn makes you wonder how fast the air was traveling (peak velocity) when it was being evacuated. Probably very subsonic.
What an engaging presentation - thanks!
Question: What are the differences between shapes optimized for supersonic flight, and for subsonic flight?
its much more simple than that actually:
the V2 distinct shape allows to draw a rocket without it looking too much like the D, thats why its used in most art, and not starship which would look like some elaborate adult toy
This is fantastic
Just to note that George Melies early french movie from 1902 used a pointed bullet device for the rocket to the moon. Not V2 graceful but early.
I clicked expecting a short, then saw the run time. You have my attention, sir.
Excellent video. FYI one of your workbench mics has a very high pitched drone that is very unpleasant. First happens at the end of the intro then sporadically afterwards
Please do a video on all the other A series rockets!