A mighty pioneer in rocketry has died. Clark Lindsey has the story. It’s been years since I saw him. I may have more thoughts later.
8 thoughts on “Bob Truax”
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A mighty pioneer in rocketry has died. Clark Lindsey has the story. It’s been years since I saw him. I may have more thoughts later.
Comments are closed.
This is sad. I recall meeting him about 10 years ago in San Diego and seeing his office. Another link to the early days of rocketry is gone.
I remember his “sea dragon” concept, which was essentially a self-launching space station.
More on Sea Dragon:
http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/searagon.htm
Its per pound launch costs would have been about 1/4 that of the Saturn V rocket.
the astronautix article has a few technical errors.
http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19880069339_1988069339.pdf
http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19880069340_1988069340.pdf
are better references.
Those Swedish guys are trying to do something very reminiscent of his X-3/Volksrocket. I would have liked knowing what he thought of it…
Bob Truax’s work was something of a revelation to me first time I read it. It was the first time I read about someone expounding cheap mass produced rockets as a solution to the space launch problem. His work on water launching was also quite interesting. Very innovative. He was one of the great US liquid rocket pioneers together with Robert Goddard. He was also a very energetic person. I remember seeing an interview with him once. He was still working actively on rocketry when most other people his age would have long been retired.
I remember him and his drop-tank powered by four Atlas verniers, ready to take his neighbor into space. That was in the early 1980s. Fifteen years later, I saw him at a NASA get-together at MSFC. I wouldn’t have guessed from that meeting that he would still be with us until now.
He was a true pioneer, and one who should rank highly in the pantheon of historical NewSpace figures.
Wow, so very very sad that Bob did not live to see his dreams come to fruition. I first heard of him on a Houston radio station in 1980. When I moved to California I made a special trip up to see him at his home in Saratoga CA. This was in 1981 when he was doing his Project Private Enterprise.
He had his suborbital rocket in his garage at the time and Fell Peters, who was his astronaut for the first flight was making glass figurines to sell to make money to help fund the venture.
I got to spend a bit of time with him then and he gave me the background on the Sea Dragon story. When NASA did not believe his low cost numbers they had TRW redo the study and they found that the numbers were even lower!
The last time that I saw Bob was at MSFC in the early 2000’s when he was on one of the teams going after some suborbital money.
Bob was a true pioneer, a gentleman, and a hell of an engineer. The aerospace world is a bit smaller today.