The Berthold Seliger Forschungs- und Entwicklungsgesellschaft mbH (BSFEGmbH) was a company founded by
West German
West Germany was the common English name for the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) from its formation on 23 May 1949 until its reunification with East Germany on 3 October 1990. It is sometimes known as the Bonn Republic after its capital c ...
rocket technical designer Berthold Seliger in 1961. Seliger was a former assistant theoretician professor Dr.
Eugen Sänger
Eugen Sänger (22 September 1905 – 10 February 1964) was an Austrian aerospace engineer best known for his contributions to lifting body and ramjet technology.
Early career
Sänger was born in the former mining town of Preßnitz (PÅ™ÃseÄ ...
. The company developed and built
prototype
A prototype is an early sample, model, or release of a product built to test a concept or process. It is a term used in a variety of contexts, including semantics, design, electronics, and Software prototyping, software programming. A prototype ...
s of
sounding rocket
A sounding rocket or rocketsonde, sometimes called a research rocket or a suborbital rocket, is an instrument-carrying rocket designed to take measurements and perform scientific experiments during its sub-orbital flight. The rockets are often ...
s and
launched them near
Cuxhaven
Cuxhaven (; ) is a town and seat of the Cuxhaven district, in Lower Saxony, Germany. The town includes the northernmost point of Lower Saxony. It is situated on the shore of the North Sea at the mouth of the Elbe River. Cuxhaven has a footprint o ...
. The BSFEGmbH cooperated strongly with the Hermann-Oberth-Gesellschaft, of which Berthold Seliger was a member. The first rocket developed by the BSFEGmbH was an improved version of the
Kumulus, which was first launched on 19 November 1962 and reached a height of 50 kilometres. On 7 February 1963 the BSFEGmbH launched a two-
stage
Stage, stages, or staging may refer to:
Arts and media Acting
* Stage (theatre), a space for the performance of theatrical productions
* Theatre, a branch of the performing arts, often referred to as "the stage"
* ''The Stage'', a weekly Brit ...
rocket with a maximum height of 80 kilometres and, on 2 May 1963, they launched a three-stage rocket with a maximum flight height of more than 100 kilometres. The latter rocket may have attained the highest flight altitude of all rockets built in post-war Germany. The signals from all these rockets were also received at the observatory in
Bochum
Bochum (, ; ; ; ) is a city in North Rhine-Westphalia. With a population of 372,348 (April 2023), it is the sixth-largest city (after Cologne, Düsseldorf, Dortmund, Essen and Duisburg) in North Rhine-Westphalia, the most populous German federa ...
(300 km SSW of Cuxhaven). After May 1963 the BSFEGmbH worked on the improvement of the steering system of their rockets and thought also on military usable rockets.
On 5 December 1963 the BSFEGmbH gave a flight demonstration of their rockets to military staff of non-
NATO
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO ; , OTAN), also called the North Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental organization, intergovernmental Transnationalism, transnational military alliance of 32 Member states of NATO, member s ...
-countries. Although their rockets were launched with reduced amount of propellant in order not to violate Allied laws concerning the development of military rockets in Germany and were not fit for military use, the rocket experiments of the Hermann-Oberth-Gesellschaft e.V. and the BSFEGmbH after this date were viewed with great suspicion.
In 1964, these experiments were discontinued with a temporary
injunction
An injunction is an equitable remedy in the form of a special court order compelling a party to do or refrain from doing certain acts. It was developed by the English courts of equity but its origins go back to Roman law and the equitable rem ...
, which is still valid today, after a fatal accident at a rocket demonstration by
Gerhard Zucker
Gerhard Zucker (1908–1985) was a German businessman and rocket engineer.
Biography
Born in Hasselfelde, he first came to public notice in 1931, when he began to work on the problem of transporting mail by rocket. In 1933 he performed several ...
at Braunlage, although Gerhard Zucker did not cooperate with the BSFEGmbH or the Hermann-Oberth-Gesellschaft e.V. in any way and also had a bad reputation with the members of these societies.
Products
*
Seliger Rocket
External links
*http://www.modellraketenbau.de/countdown/cdo030301.htm
*http://www.raketen-modellbau-technik.de/geschichte/cuxhaven/bericht.htm
Article title
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Cuxhaven (district)
Rocketry
Research institutes in Germany