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Orbital Transport und Raketen AG can claim to be the first private company to attempt to develop a commercial orbital launch solution. Founded by Lutz Kayser and counting Wernher von Braun among its advisors it had a novel approach to commoditizing rocket hardware to create a launch solution that could scale to requirements. It also performed most of the testing and launches in African nations ruled by dictators in addition to making France and the Soviet Union unhappy about a German developed rocket.The 2015 interview with The Guardian is here:
https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2015/jun/13/naked-island-idyll-eccentric-couple-recall-life-rockets-dictators
And there is a feature length documentary called ‘Fly Rocket Fly’ which has been shown at film festivals but not released properly in the US http://otrag.com/english-story
Great Video !!! Thanks all your content is always informative.
this reminds me of the crazy bundles of rockets you’d build in kerbal space that would break apart during launch.
Fly Rocket Fly (2018)
Language: German
Great topic to cover, with this relatively unknown endeavor from the 1970s (stretching into the 1980s) … Nice explanation of the components, the engineering of which underpinned the efficiencies that they were striving for.
Thanks for another great video Scott!
Weirdest design I ever saw.
very kerbal of them
how can they be so rich if they’ve been failing for so long
Fly Rocket Fly is available on Amazon instant Video and Free to watch if you have Amazon Prime
Great history! Thanks Scott!
1 million subs! Congratulations
There is acutally a movie about this called: fly rocket fly. It has english subtitles according to amazon but I am not shure about the audio.
PENTHOUSE? I REMEMBER THE STORY IN HUSTLER. 😁
4:06 SQUARE !???
Wow 1M subs!
Congratulations ✌️😛👍 🥳🍾🥴
The documentary is on amazon prime
I watched the documentary. It`s awesome!
Ahead of their time wow.
“Lots of clustered rockets.” so another IRL Kerbal Space Program…
The Movie “Fly Rocket Fly” covers the story very well!
I love that you’re taking the extra time to make those awesome videos. Thanks man. Honestly it feels like they’re well researched and the editing is on point. I initially didn’t like the switch out from KSP but this is still awesome.
I remember OTRAG being written up in Omni magazine – 1979/80-ish. Thanks for posting it! Great Stuff!
Enjoyed that bit of rocket history : )
More pls : )
I love imagining the subtitles for the post-failure conversation with Mobutu at 6:24.
General: “Look over there, was it supposed to do that?”
Designer: “Well, you see, it kind of started flying at an angle, which caused a small problem”
General: “No, no. I’m sure it’s supposed to go straight up, like this.”
Great video as always
Thanks for sharing
Scotty, this was a massively interesting episode!
I am sad, that it seems they (obviously) had massive problems steering this thing?
I remember reading about OTRAG in the New Scientist in the 1970s.
that is the most interesting story about space industry i’ve ever heard. keep them coming pls. o7
That’s something I’d do in Kerbal when early in the Tech Tree.
3:11 – Is that Paul Rudd sitting holding a rocket?!?!
grats on that sweet sweet 1 million subs, Scotty!
Very intresting. As a german, born in 1968, i never heard of it. Thank you for sharing.
wow, never heard of otrag before :O a full length documentary would be indeed very cool
Oh yes ! I remember having seen that in the belgian documentary “Mobutu, King of the ZaÏre”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BAkfzrxMJM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobutu,_King_of_Zaire
I remember reading a pretty positive-sounding (IIRC) article about OTRAG in an issue of OMNI Magazine in late 1980 or early ’81 (again, IIRC on the date).
Like a lot of failed projects they were chasing too low a price point and applying cheap solutions that only partly solved a problem. The basic concept of clustering is sound after all that is exactly what soyuz and space X do. It seems like an ideal aplication for HTP/RP1 engines a la the gama used on Black Knight a highly capable design killed by the same politics that sought to peserve the US monopoly of the time. The cold war era just was not the time to develop comercial launch systems. I suspect there are a lot of good engineering solutions hiding in the supressed space programes of may countries.
Wow, thanks for the super high quality content!
The documentary is amazing, you definitely should see it when possible.
Scott, Are you going to do a video on one of the astronauts having part of her helmet come off yesterday?
make this in KSP
Thanks for this video
The company was from my home town. So sad commercial spaceflight didn’t really take off (:P) back then.
Always learning something new here. Thanks.
Perfectly logical design when your low on the tech tree.
5:38 that looks like the landing strip on the island in KSP
I woud like to see it fly
3:01
Ladies…
He looks like eugene from the walking dead
Last Monday was my birthday and I got a Orion star blast 2 4.5. I can’t wait for the sky to be clear enough for some good stargazing
Hey Scott, are you looking forward to the upcoming SpaceX Dragon 2 flight abort test in 16 hours time?
4:20 looks like something straight out of ksp
03:50
A bit more Kerbal than I expected at the beginning.
Hi Scott Congratulations on 1 Million subs!!! Love your content. FLY SAFE From Manchester England
4:05 that picture remind me too much of the Crysis barrel movies. Made me laugh.
2:28 OMG, I just realized these guys are literally the construction minions from _Evil Genius._
Literally “Moar Boosters”
I love it! I’ve built things like this in KSP.
I think bigger segments the size of a semi-trailer would be interesting. You’d need less segments, still transportable, still mass producible, could have larger engine bells for vacuum stages, etc.
4:22 This guy clearly lived in the cassette age
I wonder if OTRAG was somehow one of the inspirations for the Kerbal Space Program game.
I remember this. Always wanted to know what happened to OTRAG. Thank you Scott.
I want to go and make this in KSP right now but i’m stuck at work
They’re really out here launching an office building into space
The documentary is on Amazon Prime (in the US).
nice the timing of me refreshing my youtube feed and now I see this vid and says “15 sec ago”
“von Braun” – Thank you ever so much, Scott, from the bottom of my heart. _tears up_
Cool, I’m from Germany and never heard of OTRAG. Thanks for that!
The docu ‘Fly Rocket Fly’ seems to be available on iTunes and Amazon. Have to give this a look on the weekend.
Has there ever been an orbital vehicle that successfully used _only_ differential thrust for steering? To my knowledge the concept has never worked, but correct me if I’m wrong.
It would have been entertaining to see that water tower fly though…
Its nice to have standardized boosters to ease construction, but when the implementation of these boosters is more complex than just building a bigger booster…
Now I’m remembering the Mythbusters test where they made a rocket sled to launch Buster through the air that was powered by nothing but Estes motors. That was a nightmare to get working, and that was just one stage – they resorted to putting the tail of the rocket in a pan of black powder just because they knew there was no way that wouldn’t hit all the rockets.
Now I’m remembering my brush with rocketry as a little boy. Nothing was less reliable than that electric launch system. Sometimes it launched in a few seconds, sometimes after tense minutes…and if you’re anything like me, sometimes the wind kills you before staging can.
4:10 This looks like taken straight from a Perry Rhodan novel ^^
Remember the Canadian space gun/artillery designer who couldn’t get any work in the west, so he worked for some dubious folk in the ME, and got assassinated?
otrag engineers: how many boosters do you want?
lutz: yes
ortag: is 50 enough?
lutz: moar boosters!!!
Never heard of this at all, sounds like a similar story to Gerald Bull and his orbital guns. Apart from the end, instead of an island he ended up being assassinated by Mossad… probably.
In the Dark Days before Thiokol Rubber.
@2:30 “Are We Men? No! We Are DEVO!”
@4:10 Launching the World Trade Center
Yep, that looks like a 70s era automotive windshield wiper motor right in the middle at 2:55
I have John D Clark’s book ‘Ignition’I’m gonna make one of these so I’m just off to the shed.(Anyone got any Mercury and Fluorine?)
I think I have played too much ksp because my first tough when he said 1000 core rocket was “it would run slow with that high a part count..”
Lighting 40 motors at the same time sounds problematic
How very kerbal of them. Not enough thrust? just add more of the same boosters!
5:05 “There were however some problems”
color me surprised, I did not see this one going wrong
Where the hell did you find that much info and images and VIDEO about OTRAG?????? I have been looking for years to get some details on their designs, let alone actual pictures. What is your source?
Two words: Moar boosters
Oh that’s interesting, I am from Germany and have already read about the German rocket company on Wikipedia but could not find much about it.
There was a design being kicked around McDonnell Douglas back during the Reagan SDI years. They called it the Barbarian.
It was 12 clustered Delta II 1st stages, 3 Shuttle SRBs, with a 5M Titan IV fairing on top. I don’t recall what was being used as an upper-stage. During that time they would have probably opted for either a Boeing IUS or a Lockheed 2 engine Centaur. One of the managers had a model of it in his office. It was impressive.
When this skyscraper sized rocket appeared on the screen I burst into laud laughter
Crazy idea 
Looks like all of my KSP rockets
Scott- You know you have to do this in KSP now? Thanks for the great content, it must have been very intriguing at the time and you can see why SpaceX received a lot of scepticism initially.
3:58 – world trade center north has liftoff!
Lol “We want to build incredibly simple rockets”
“We’re gonna build a rocket with over a thousand engines and fuel tanks”
Yeah…..
A strange twist to this story. The journalist of the Guardian article on Lutz was Kim Wall. She was murdered by Peter Madsen, mad inventor who built his own submarine, and now wanted to build rocket and go to space in collaboration with Copenhagen Suborbitals. They called him the RocketMan. He tortured and killed her on board his own submarine and dumped her dismembered body in the ocean. He is now in prison indefinetly. RIP Kim and the Danish Space Program.
just wanted to say thank you for starting me on my path to becoming an aerospace engineer about 4 years ago. you’re the best.
Thanks Scott for doing a video about OTRAG! Lutz Kayser actually was my granduncle, although i Never got to See him as He basically lived on the other side of the world…
The movie is really Good and informative and i recommend watching it , but it only covers the story when they were in Zaire.
I may still have some original documents lying around, so if you Want i could send some Pictures of them to you.
That guy was obsessed with asparagus
“Nitrogen tetroxide”
_starts running away from the very idea of this rocket_
This design is insane! Like, they are aware of square-cube law, right? And they went against it…
Also: people are afraid that we might develop weapons, so to elevate their concerns lets work with dictators!
I love the progression here. They had to leave Germany, so they went to Zaire and worked with Mobutu. Then they have to leave Zaire and went to Libya and worked with Ghaddafi. Then oh by the way they had an original Hitler painting.
Great people.
The largest flying model rocket I ever built used a cluster of seven Estes D engines. I hadn’t realied how badly misalignment of the ganged body-tubes would affect the flight performance of the rocket, it partly broke midair, pitched downward, caught fire while still flying, and crashed right after the engines burned out. Needless to say, I kept it to single-engines per-stage after that.
Russian N1 rocket: 30 engines
SpaceX Starship: 37 engines
ORTAG: hold my beer
I see they didn’t try the “add more struts” technique. Amateurs.
This is the most kerbal disign of any real rocket Ive ever seen:
“Okay what if, and hear me out here, we just strap 400 boosters in stages together? What could go wrong?”