Five Brothers and a War

V-2 Rocket

The technical name of the V-2 was the Aggregat 4 (A4) . It was the world's first long-range ballistic missile and was the first man-made object to enter the edges of space. Essentially, the rocket motor fired for a little more than a minute, propelling the rocket to an altitude of about 80 km (50 miles), which is very near the edge of space, which is now agreed to be at 100 km (62 miles). Its trajectory was controlled, at least in a rudimentary fashion. The paint pattern on the V-2 is indicative of its simple guidance system. Various graphic schemes were tested, including full camouflage, but in the end, the approved pattern was a simple checkerboard in order to allow ground controllers to see whether the rocket vehicle was properly spinning around its vertical flight axis. The rockets reached speeds of about 5,500 km/h (3,400 mph). It goes without saying that when flying faster than the speed of sound, the rocket impacted before the sound-waves could catch up. Therefore the rocket was silent prior to impact.

The V-2 rockets were about 14 m (46 feet) tall. In comparison with future generations of rockets, it was tiny. However, the funda mental rocketry principles of the V-2 are still used in modern rockets.

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Five Brothers and a War

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