tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6618880.post7650376275537812975..comments2024-03-27T00:26:31.343-07:00Comments on The Commercial Space Blog: Rocket Spaceflight Accurately Described by Scottish-Canadian Scientist in 1861Chuck Blackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09506476753520146858noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6618880.post-20994204364128708432015-10-08T11:17:25.848-07:002015-10-08T11:17:25.848-07:00Fascinating and wildly inaccurate summary of Leitc...Fascinating and wildly inaccurate summary of Leitch and my paper by the gentleman above. Where to begin? Firstly, yes, William Moore was one of a long line of rocket engineers who understood Newton, including and most importantly Hale and Congreve. None of the above gentlemen suggested using a rocket to travel into space. The fact that Leitch suggested that a rocket was the ONLY vehicle that was known that could go into space and that it would work BETTER in space is the whole point. A fact that Goddard was still being forced to prove 60 years later. Yes Leitch's book is online for free, that's where I found it. That would be the third edition. Post Jules Verne. I traced it back to its source in 1861 which is NOT online although it is substantially the same and is PRE Jules Verne. A fact relevant to the story. Leitch only "disposes" of the rocket in favour of riding on a comet because in his words he didn't want to "torture his imagination" in trying to figure out how to build a rocket powered vehicle. If the gentleman above had bothered to actually read my paper he would find that I also compared Leitch's writings to Cosmos. Leitch does NOT consider a comet to be rocket-like, other than its appearance which the poster would know if he'd actually read Leitch's carefully. He was an astronomer and scientist who lectured on ballistics and specifically spin-stabilized projectiles and knew exactly what a comet's nature was. And no this man was not like Cyrano de Bergerac, a drunken soldier of fortune who sold his stories for beer money before Newton's day, and whose other methods including smearing himself with lard to get to the moon. <br /><br />And Leitch's book may well have been trying to reconcile theology and science, Isaac Newton tried to do the same thing. There are over 80 other citations in my paper which were subjected to the scrutiny of Frank H. Winter curator of Rocketry at the Smithsonian and the world's leading expert on this subject. His four page analysis is also on my website. Mr David Baker, editor of Jane's Defense and now editor of BIS Spaceflight magazine and the most cited person in the world on the history of the Rocket also spent two months looking at my assertions. I was then challenged to prove that Leitch actually understood what he was saying by the Chair of the AAS History committee, so I spent three months uncovering Leitch's entire background, which involved four researchers in Scotland and a half dozen in Canada. <br />Whatever the point being made above, I will reiterate. As far as we know Leitch is now the earliest TRAINED SCIENTIST who postulated using a rocket for space flight because he knew no normal aircraft would work (in his day that meant balloon) and that it would work better in space. The fact that he cited Newton and Kepler and understood things like the nature of a vacuum on light, sound and ballistics, that he proposed that asteroids could be used as a sort of colony and that if you travelled at light speed, time would slow down, are incidental. This guy didn't become a University Principal because he was a dummy or some second-rate fiction hack. The fact that his book evidently sold over 500,000 copies and stayed in print for 50 years says it all. Robert Godwinhttp://thespacelibrary.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6618880.post-44665273167864840052015-10-07T18:58:21.447-07:002015-10-07T18:58:21.447-07:00Sadly, this story is incorrect. William Joe Moore ...Sadly, this story is incorrect. William Joe Moore was the first to write of rockets in the context of Newton's Third Law. He did it in 1813, half a century before Leitch wrote his book. One can read about this in the OXFORD DICTIONARY OF NATIONAL BIOGRAPHY online for free. One can also find William Leitch's book GOD'S GLORY IN THE HEAVENS on Google, again for free.<br /><br />Leitch's book does not say what this story claims it does. Leitch actually describes rocket travel into space as impossible - he disposes of the notion in a paragraph. He goes on to say that, if a comet - which he incorrectly likens to a rocket - "touched" Earth, it could serve as a vehicle for an imaginary trip through the cosmos. I am reminded of Sagan's "spaceship of the imagination" in COSMOS.<br /><br />The word "rocket" occurs on pages 4, 5, and 149, of Leitch's book, which is actually an effort to reconcile science & religion, not a treatise on spaceflight. In most instances, the word "rocket" refers to the comet - either Leitch's mistaken belief that a comet is a rocket or the rocket-like appearance of the comet. <br /><br />It is not hard to check whether what I write is accurate - simply Google the sources I reference. Oddly enough, The OXFORD DICTIONARY OF NATIONAL BIOGRAPHY cites papers by Frank Winter, one of the endorsers of this claim, when it describes William Joe Moore's contribution to rocketry.<br /><br />dsfpDavid S. F. Portreehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15818906581595028816noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6618880.post-46218937441201003212015-10-05T11:06:01.812-07:002015-10-05T11:06:01.812-07:00FYI A far more comprehensive biography is on the S...FYI A far more comprehensive biography is on the Space Library with all the details about his space writings.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6618880.post-24422609317411478902015-10-05T09:11:07.108-07:002015-10-05T09:11:07.108-07:00Cool! Interested parties can also read his biograp...Cool! Interested parties can also read his biography here: http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/leitch_william_9E.html Dictionary of Canadian Biographyhttp://www.biographi.canoreply@blogger.com