Propulsori A Reazione Per L’Astronautica, Seconda Comunicazione.

Gussalli’s second communication on his “double reaction” propulsion system for astronautics, expanding a paper he first read in 1930. Part One revisits, updated, the same double-reaction propulsor he built and tested in 1912 and had already reported on in his 1923 Si Può Già Tentare Un Viaggio Dalla Terra Alla Luna? (Catalog A) — a Serpollet steam generator driving a De Laval-type turbine wheel — illustrated with period photographs of the actual apparatus, and closes with an appendix table of astronautics milestones adapted from Robert Esnault-Pelterie’s L’Astronautique (1930), into which Gussalli inserts his own 1909–1912 experiments to assert priority.

Part Two lays out his 1939-patented (Belgian patent 436,202) “Veicolo per l’Astronautica”: an intersiderial vehicle that collects solar radiation on a 130-meter mirrored and blackened tail to raise steam and drive six independent turbo-propulsors, sidestepping the need to carry propellant mass — his proposed answer to the mass-ratio problem central to contemporary rocket theory.

The table of contents lists dedicated technical-critique chapters addressed to Robert Esnault-Pelterie and Hermann Oberth (Part Three, Caps. 47 and 49), followed by a lengthy point-by-point rebuttal of an examiner’s objections to his work.