Navigation Interplanétaire.

Number 6 in the Problèmes series of Éditions Elzévir (64 pages, printed 5 September 1946), by the director of the Astronautics Section of the Aéro-Clubs Universitaires et Scolaires de France—Ananoff’s first book; his earlier publications were pamphlets or reprinted lectures. In the introduction he recalls that his first astronautics lecture, in 1929, was received as entertainment, at a time when the international astronautics prize of Hirsch and Esnault-Pelterie had barely been created and no one knew of the V-2, the atomic bomb or radar.

The short chapters cover Jules Verne’s role, the atmosphere, the principle of the reaction motor, propulsive energy, giant rockets, stability and steering, the cabin, onboard instruments (including his old idea of an “Astronavigraphe”), free-fall Earth–Moon trajectories and arrival on another planet. The conclusion calls for collective, international work and notes the new Astronautics Section and its bulletin L’Astronef. Plates include a still from Lang’s Frau im Mond and a Valier-type ship with lateral nozzles.

The short bibliography lists Ananoff’s own articles and works by Esnault-Pelterie, Gussalli, Lasser, Perelman, Roy and Tsiolkovsky, several of them in this collection; his 1935 lectures of the same title are also in Catalog A.