High-Altitude Research With V-2 Rockets.

Ernst H. Krause of the Naval Research Laboratory’s review of the first year of V-2 upper-atmosphere research in the United States, printed on pages 189–207 of the Annual Report of the Smithsonian Institution for 1948 (with six plates). The note on the first page records that it was read on April 25, 1947 and reprinted by permission from the Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, vol. 91, no. 5, December 1947. This copy is a rebound offprint, in brown cloth boards with a printed paper label on the cover.

Krause argues that rockets overcome both limits of the balloon: a ceiling of 30–40 km and a payload of about 100 pounds, against 1,000 pounds to 200 km or more for a rocket. He describes the V-2 (about 46 feet high, 28,000 pounds fueled, 9,000 empty, carrying about 2,000 pounds of payload) and the V-2 Panel that coordinated the work among the Army Ordnance Department, General Electric, the Naval Research Laboratory, Michigan, Johns Hopkins, Princeton, Harvard, Caltech and others. The experiments covered include solar ultraviolet spectra, cosmic rays, pressure and temperature, and telemetering, illustrated with photographs of the missile and instrument installations and with data plots. A list of 40 references closes the piece.