OTRAG

[Kai Frederik Lorentzen]

http://fuseurop.univ-perp.fr/otrag_e.htm





    OTRAG rockets

Orbital Transport und Raketen AktienGesellschaft



            Static test at Lampoldshaussen OTRAG

In the Seventies, Lutz Kaiser, a former student of Eugen Sanger, 
projected the construction of low cost modular space launchers. He 
created the OTRAG company, whose registered offices were based in 
Stuttgart in Germany, and secured the assistance of Kurt Debus who had 
been director of the Peenemünde Center then of the Kennedy Space Center.

The OTRAG rockets family was conceived from a standard basic module 
composed of a couple of cylindrical tubes 30 cm in diameter containing 
one the fuel (kerosene), the other the oxidizer (nitric acid). Each of 
them comprised, at the base, a 30 kN engine supplied by tank 
pressurization by means of a 40 bars compressed air reserve. The rocket 
modules were to be grouped in bundles which dimensions were a function 
of the payload. The thrust of the engines could take only three values: 
stop, half-mode and full mode. However, it was possible to control 
individually each engine of the bundle, and by this way to allow a 
flight program execution. The most powerful vehicle of the series was to 
include 600 engines with each one a 40 m length propellant tank.

In December 1975, OTRAG signed an agreement with the Zaire government to 
establish a rocket range in the north of Shaba. Three test vehicles were 
launched there. At the time of the two first, happened in May 1977 and 
May 1978, two 6 m high rockets equipped each with four engines 
culminated respectively to 20 and 30 km. But in June 1978, a 12 m rocket 
with four modules crashed after a few seconds of flight.

In April 1979, following the political pressures exerted by the USSR, 
the Zaire government put an end to the agreement with OTRAG. The company 
then installed its rocket range in Libya, 600 km in the south of 
Tripoli. Test flights were apparently carried out there in 1981, but the 
program worried this time the USA which finally obliged OTRAG to leave 
the country. A last launch took place in Kiruna (Sweden) in 1983.
The OTRAG stopped its activities in 1987.


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