Austrian rocket scientist Friedrich Schmiedl dreamt of a postal service by rocket

THE eccentric young Austrian Friedrich Schmiedl failed in his attempt to launch a rocket from a balloon high over Graz ninety years ago, but he left his mark on the history of rocketry

Fritz von Opel used 24 rockets packed with 120kg of explosives to reach a top speed of 238km/h at Berlin's AVUS racetrack on May 23,1928.

AS t he eccentric young Austrian looked skyward, the disappointment of his failed experiment was etched on his face. Ninety years ago today, on June 28, 1928, Friedrich Schmiedl attempted to launch a rocket from a balloon floating 50,000 feet (15,000m) above Graz, one of Austria’s biggest cities, hoping instruments aboard would capture scientific information.

Unfortunately, he lost sight of the rocket and it was never recovered.

Undeterred, Schmiedl made improvements to his rocket and later launched the world’s first rocket mail service, delivering letters over a distance of 3km. Although his dream of a rocket delivery service between major cities never came to fruition, it added to the rocket mania that gripped the world at the time.

Born in Schwertberg, Austria, in 1902, Schmiedl developed a fascination with fireworks when he was 12. At 16 he began experimenting with solid fuel rockets.

Undated photo of Austrian rocket scientist Friedrich Schmiedl who used rockets to deliver mail in the 1930s.

This was an era when rockets were still mostly military, but Schmiedl was one of a group of dreamers who saw rockets as something more than a means to destroy an enemy or light up the night sky. Inspired by writers such as French science fiction pioneer Jules Verne, who described voyages into space, many people were experimenting with rockets as a form of transport for making flights around the globe or beyond the Earth.

In 1903 Russian schoolteacher Konstantin Tsiolkovsky wrote his pioneering work Exploration Of Space By Means Of Reaction Machines, the first serious scientific work on rocketry.

In the US in 1912, engineer Robert Goddard began experiments controlling rockets and designing more efficient fuels for them.

There was also a strong interest in rocketry in Europe. In 1923 Austrian-born physicist Hermann Oberth, studying in Germany, published Die Rakete zu den Planetenraumen (The Rocket Into Planetary Space). Schmiedl was influenced by these developments as he studied civil engineering at the Graz Technische Hochschule (University of Technology) from 1924.

Fritz von Opel with his streamlined rocket-powered racing car, the Rak. 2, reached a top speed of 238km/h at Berlin's AVUS racetrack on May 23, 1928.

This was an exciting time for anyone interested in rocketry. In March 1927 another Austrian, Max Valier, convinced Fritz von Opel, manufacturer of Opel cars, to strap a rocket to the back of one of his racing cars. The test of the car, dubbed the Rak. 1 (from the German rakete for rocket) was a fizzer because the rocket was fighting against the friction of the car’s tyres. Valier later developed a more streamlined Rak. 2, which had 24 rockets and reached a top speed of 145m/h (238km/h), a version that ran on rails was unsuccessful, and a bob sled that lifted off the ice was
more successful.

In June 1927 Oberth and Valier were among a group of enthusiasts who formed the Verein fur Raumschiffahrt (Society for Space Travel) or VfR, whose members also included Wernher von Braun. Schmiedl was never a member, but his experiments with rockets fitted with instruments designed primarily to take scientific measurements, were well known among the rocket community.

Hermann Oberth (centre, in profile) demonstrated a liquid-fuel rocket engine in Berlin in 1930. Second from the right is Wernher von Braun. Picture: National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution

When his experiment on June 28, 1928, failed, he continued to work on the design and was soon successfully launching rockets that returned images taken by cameras mounted on his rockets. He discovered there was interest beyond scientists and he could make money from people willing to pay to have letters sent into the stratosphere.

An idea evolved to establish a rocket transport network across the globe. He began to develop a method whereby letters could be retrieved from the rocket by a parachute falling at a final stage.

To prove the viability of his idea, in February 1931 he sent more than 100 letters from Schockl mountain to the village of St Radegund 3km away. He launched others over greater distances, but was shut down in 1934 by the Austrian Post Office, which had rejected his rocket postal service proposal as they were not keen on the competition.

A page from an Austrian magazine from the 1930s talking about Friedrich Schmiedl's rocket postal service.

He wasn’t the only person who had a rocket postal service idea. Another was German Gerhard Zucker who demonstrated his rockets for the Nazis in 1933. Failing to convince them he later accepted an invitation to show his rockets in the UK, an invitation that had been turned down by Schmiedl. Zucker was later deported back to Germany.

In 1935 the government banned civilians from possessing explosives, ending Schmiedl’s research. By then he had already destroyed his rocket works and research, fearing that it would be used by the military, and turned to propulsion systems for boats. The VfR members were not so concerned about selling their expertise to the Nazis and many went to work on German weapons projects, primarily as a way of funding their rocket research. Schmiedl refused.

He was conscripted during World War II and sent to Crimea. After the war he was approached to work on the US space program. But like von Braun and others, he refused. He died in 1994.