Robert Esnault-Pelterie “From the sky to the stars, the solitary genius”

Description

On October 4, 1957, the launch of the Sputnik satellite opened
to man the gates of space. The Russians emphasized the influence
of a Frenchman, Robert Esnault-Pelterie. From 1912, this one
was one of the first to consider space flight before
publish, in 1930, his major book, Astronautics.
Born in Paris in 1881, died in Nice on December 6, 1957, Robert
Esnault-Pelterie is one of the two men, alongside the Russian
Constantin Tsiolkovsky, to have been one of the pioneers of both
aviation and space.
A true adventurer in the air, he invented the fin in 1905, then the
"Broomstick" in 1906 (which will find an unexpected extension
in all the human-machine interfaces of our daily life,
from gaming consoles to laptops) which he equips
his plane the "REP 1", the direct ancestor of modern airplanes.
He then turned to jet propulsion and its application
space flights. His books and lectures - in particular
that of New York in 1931, accompanied by the film by Fritz
Lang The Girl in the Moon - meet a wide echo. But its
ideas and work on the rocket, a great figure of the times
modern, do not meet with success.
Despite a series of resounding lawsuits, notably
against the American government (which will even motivate a
of the Supreme Court in 1938!), he did not succeed in having
the authorship of his major inventions. In 1941, ill and
tired, Robert Esnault-Pelterie went into exile in Switzerland. He will die in
a clinic, two months after witnessing the maiden flight
of Sputnik.
Félix Torres and Jacques Villain's book is the first biography
by REP. Using many unpublished archives explored
in France, Switzerland, Russia and the United States, and an iconography
abundant, it gives us to relive the exceptional career
and panting of an extraordinary inventor, while reflecting
under the conditions of the diffusion of innovation in the
modern society.