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Robert Albert Charles Esnault-Pelterie is best known for his pioneering contributions to aviation. In 1912 he wrote that spaceflight was possible, but only with nuclear propulsion. After hearing of other rocketry visionaries, he worked to popularize space travel ideas in France.
As early as 1912, Esnault-Pelterie had also begun to write and lecture on the subject of space flight. He coined the word astronautics and was a cosponsor of the R.E.P.-Hirsch Prize for important contributions to the field.
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In January 1918 during World War I, André — still a teenager — took a patent for a technique of secrete long-distance telegraphy using infrared radiation. The scientific reputation of Hirsch had made him a close friend of Robert Esnault-Pelterie, who was 18 years older than André.
- Robert Esnault-Pelterie – Background
- Inventing The Aileron
- The Pelterie I
- From Pilot to Airplane Manufacturer
- Inventing The Joystick
- Space Travel in 1913
- Ballistic Missiles
- Further Achievements
Robert Esnault-Pelterie was born on November 8, 1881 in Paris as the son of a comfortably well-off cotton industrialist. He was educated at the Faculté des Sciences, and earned degrees at the Sorbonnein 1902 in botany, physics, and chemistry. After further studying engineering at the Sorbonne, he began his first experiments in aviation, which were ...
His first glider design was tested on a beach near Calais, but was not successful. His glider was based upon an incomplete understanding of the Wright glider built using secondhand information, and although using a version of the wing-warping which the Wright brothers had used to control their aircraft this did not work properly and was abandoned, ...
In 1906 he took the risk of being towed by an automobile, the better to study the mysteries of air pressure. His progress paralleled the advances of Bleriot and on 19 September 1906 he succeeded to fly 500 m. He made his first powered flight on October 10, 1907, a distance of 100 m (330 ft) with the Pelterie I(or R.E.P. I). This was driven by a se...
Trials of the monoplane Pelterie II began on June 8, 1908. This aircraft set a record with a 1,200 m flight, reaching an altitude of 30 m. After a modified version of this plane was flown for the last time in 1909 at Rheims, when a crash that ended Esnault-Pelterie’s career as a pilot. Pelterie stopped flying and instead focused on the development ...
The Vickers R.E.P. Type Monoplane was based upon his designs, and marked the beginning of aircraft production at the later Vickers Limited. His family had invested heavily to fund his aircraft designs, and this had left them nearly financially ruined. However, he was the inventor of the “joystick” flight control, and owned a patent on the design. F...
Esnault-Pelterie became interested in space travel, and, not knowing of Tsiolkovsky‘s 1903 work , in 1913 produced a paper that presented the rocket equation and calculated the energies required to reach the Moon and nearby planets. In this talk, he proposed the use of atomic energy, using 400 kg of radium to power an interplanetary vehicle. His cu...
In 1929 Esnault-Pelterie proposed the idea of the ballistic missile for military bombardment. He believed such weapons could deliver huge payloads of explosives over hundreds of miles, a vision of the World War II V-1 and V-2 offensives by Nazi Germany. By 1930, Esnault-Pelterie and Jean-Jacques Barrehad persuaded the French War Department to fund ...
Esnault-Pelterie also invented the rocket steering concept of the gimbaled or swiveling nozzle, which is used on all space launch vehicles today. He received over 200 patents for his inventions in fields such as metallurgy, electricity, magnetism, fluid dynamics, thermo-dynamics, combustion turbines, automobile suspensions, tidal energy and rocketr...
On 15 November 1912, Esnault-Pelterie presented a paper to the Physics Society of France. In one of the first scientific discussions of the problems of space travel, he suggested that atomic energy would hold the key to solving the problem of reaching the Moon and other celestial bodies.
The R.E.P., monoplane, named after its designer, Robert Esnault-Peltier, was the first plane with a completely enclosed fuselage. Constructed with welded-steel tubing, it was covered with red muslin. THE R.E.P. MONOPLANE, 1907 Robert Esnault-Pelterie, an early Aero Club enthusiast, was the son of a comfortably well-off cotton industrialist.
May 19, 2018 · Esnault-Pelterie soon shifted his interests into space exploration. On November 15, 1912, in a paper to the Physics Society of France, he offered an early discussion of the problems of space travel, including a proposal to use atomic energy to travel to the Moon and the planets.
