Talk:Hermann Oberth

I am currently in the process of translating from the Romanian-language article, which is the most comprehensive. That article refers to Oberth as studying medicine at the "Universitatea din Munchen" (University of Munich). I am unaware of any such University. I'd guess it means the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, but I'm really hesitant to put a guess in an encyclopedia article, so I am just saying he studied in Munich. If any one actually knows what university he studied at, please feel free to correct the article. Jmabel 00:06, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)

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Hermann Oberth created the University of Munich for his personal studies, when he was done with it he had it destroyed and turned into a starbucks.

German or Romanian?

Wouldn't it be more correct to say that Oberth was a Romanian Physicist?

No, because he was an ethnical german born in Austria-Hungary, in a region that is now Romania. Besides this, he spent much of his life in Germany and made most of his scientific discoveries there. So, he is a german physicist, but that doesn't mean he isn't highly respected on his birth place. Mihai -^talk 08:21, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

Hei, that region was a romanian region from the year 1260.That land is and it will always be in Romania. TKS

Transylvania is part of Romania from 1918/1920, not from 1260. Also, it had major German and Hungarian population.Baxter9 (talk) 22:11, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

Azimuth?

The A4 (aka V-2) is credited with an "azimuth of 50 miles" in the article. I suspect a well-meaning but misinformed person is referring to the system's apogee (its maximum altitude). Apogee is a poor measure of a rocket's performance, however, without discussing the range and payload of the system. Describing a missile by its length and apogee is almost as bad as describing a racehorse by saying "he's brown with dark eyes, and he can run a mile." I suggest that the description of the A4 be replaced with information from the V-2 rocket article: "The V-2 had an operational range of about 300 km (200 statute miles) carrying a 1000 kg (2,200 lb) warhead."

Goddard's Criticism of Oberth

I don't know if folks want to include this, but Robert Goddard was extremely critical of Oberth. He believed that Oberth plagiarized the work Goddard published in 1920, and was very bitter about him all through his life. DonPMitchell 23:08, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

BTW, I don't believe Goddard was justified in this, although Oberth was aware of Goddard's 1919 book and some of this ideas (staged rockets, and some of the math) may have been borrowed from or inspired by Goddard. DonPMitchell (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 07:02, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

Romanian?

I need people who claim that he was Romanian to indicate what logic they follow. He was born in Austria-Hungary, never had Romanian citizenship afaik, and left his native region it was Romanian... Dahn 07:02, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

Never mind. I see now he left in 1938. Dahn 07:13, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

WikiProject class rating

This article was automatically assessed because at least one article was rated and this bot brought all the other ratings up to at least that level. BetacommandBot 16:44, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

Place of Birth

Was Oberth born in the city of Schäßburg or in Hermannstadt? The German-language Wikipedia suggests Hermannstadt. --Groshna (talk) 12:04, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Technical Information

A worthy project would be to add some actual technical information about Oberth's discoveries. He was apparently not aware of the prior work of Tsiolkovsky, Esnault-Pelterie and Goddard, but his 1923 booklet has some important new ideas in it. In particular, his analysis of exhaust speed and thermodynamics and mixture ratios was very new and important. DonPMitchell (talk) 04:25, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Hermann and Extraterrestrials

On an episode of UFO Hunters, they say that Oberth said "men from other worlds helped us" and that he was involved with some supernatural society later in life that included mediums, as well as his having served as honorary president of the German UFO society. Do you think that UFO Hunters is a credible source (It's history channel).PonileExpress (talk) 22:56, 4 June 2009 (UTC)