Nazis in Space! The True Story

[Music] the internet that great fountain of information has been awash for years with stories and rumors many based on historical evidence that the Nazis made it into space perhaps even building a base on the Dark Side of the Moon fictional accounts from the fevered imaginations of fiction writers who penned sci-fi novels on this subject decades before the invention of the Internet have provided a fertile base for such beliefs and even Hollywood has jumped on the Nazis in space trove with films like iron sky too many such stories seem perfectly plausible considering how technologically advanced the Germans became in World War two well in fact the internet rumors and pulp fiction novels are based often unwittingly on a surprising truth Nazi Germany was the first nation to enter space forget all about moon bases flying saucers and nasty astronauts the real truth of how Nazi Germany began the space race is astounding well-documented and surprising depending on how you define where space begins determines the year that Nazi Germany first entered space according to the internationally recognized Carmen line space begins at a hundred kilometers or 62 miles above sea level however NASA defines the beginning of space as 50 miles above sea level so according to the nasa definition the first man-made object to enter space did so on the 3rd of october 1942 when a German v2 rocket reached an altitude of between 85 and 90 kilometers above the earth through a test firing from pana Mandir in Germany at this point general Wouter dornberger the director of the vengeance weapons program is said to have stated today the space age is born each v2 rocket was 14 meters or 45 feet 11 inches in length and weighed 12 and a half thousand kilos or 27 thousand 600 pounds with 25 tons of thrust from an alcohol and liquid oxygen fueled engine the v2 could deliver a nearly one ton warhead as supersonic speeds of up to three hundred and fourteen kilometers or a 195 miles away if you believe that space actually starts at a hundred kilometers or 62 miles the so-called Carmen line then the first man-made object to enter it was you've guessed it a German v2 missile in June 1944 during vertical testing v2 reached a recorded altitude of a hundred and eighty-nine kilometers or a hundred and seventeen miles above the earth the question is did any Nazis actually make it into orbit the inventor of the v2 Verna von Braun wanted to modify a v2 to carry a German into space a v2 couldn't achieve orbit but was technically capable of putting a man into space on a sub orbital trajectory in the early 1940s from Browns team studied evolving the v2 into a manual rocket plane this version called the a nine had wings to extend its range from 250 to 550 kilometers but to be truly a spacecraft the second stage had to be planned the a9 a 10 man ICBM however in 1943 the Nazis prohibited all further research into manned spaceflight in favor of the war production of v2 rocket bombs but by autumn 1944 allied advances had pushed the v2 batteries beyond the range of southeast England their primary target the a 9 project was hastily revived von Braun created the a4 be the prototype a 9-5 were built by the 24th of October 1944 the first was launched on the 27th of December but crashed very close to its launch pad the second was launched on the 24th of January 1945 it reached 80 kilometers above the surface of the earth pitched over into a stable glide at 1,200 meters per second and then one wing broke off the program was ended thereafter but that's not the end of the space firsts for the Nazis after Germany surrendered the Americans British and Soviets raced to snatch rockets and scientists the very first film of the Earth taken from space was made by the it states using a captured German v2 missile on the 24th of October 1946 rocket number 13 blasted off from White Sands New Mexico reaching 100 and 4.6 kilometers altitude and took a precious few seconds of black-and-white footage showing the curvature of the earth and the blackness of space beyond the v2 program was an ultimately evil creation that killed 12,000 slave workers to build 6,000 rockets 2,000 of those rockets hit targets in Britain and Europe and killed over five and a half thousand people the Nazis sank an astounding two billion dollars into the v2 program the same amount of the Allies spent on the development of the atomic bomb in the Manhattan Project militarily the v2 was a failure and actually hastened Germany's defeat as resources were squandered on its development but there is no denying the scientific achievement of getting a man-made object into space from this dark Genesis would emerge the peaceful exploration of space today thanks for watching subscribe and share and help support my channel at PayPal and patreon details in the description box below [Music]

Channel: Mark Felton Productions

Views: 741,218

Rating: 4.9303403 out of 5

Keywords: Nazis in Space! The Real Story, Mark Felton Productions, V-2 Rocket, NASA, Wernher von Braun, Walter Dornberger

Id: 3Z6EqhF0xgg

Length: 6min 23sec (383 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 28 2019