Article published on April 26th, 2009 in El Comercio newspaper, Lima. At the present time, we offer it in English version.
In 1897, Pedro Paulet had invented a spacecraft with a liquid-fueled rocket engine. He revealed this in a letter published in El Comercio in 1927 when in Europe the German Astronautic Society had just begun its researchs.
Alvaro Mejía S.*
The Saint Rose Basilica stands magnificent at the top of San Cristobal hill. A roar comes from the sky. It is the Torpedo Airplane drawing a circle above the Basilica and landing on the artificial lake formed by the dam in the Rimac river. When it submerges, the waters return to their level and calm comes back again.
This situation comes from Pedro Paulet’s imagination. The Torpedo Airplane was invented when he was in France and Belgium, in the transition from the 19th century into the 20th century, when Jules Verne was still alive. The project for the urbanization and embellishing of the north of Lima, where Santa Rosa church would crown the top of the San Cristobal hill, was finished in Holland in 1932, when science fiction was at its peak.
Science fiction, yes; pure imagination, no. The Torpedo Airplane design was admired by the German aerospace experts from the late 1920’s, because of its vertical launching system, thanks to its rocket engine placed on the base of its hang glider -which, when pivoted, allowed to fly horizontally-. Unfortunately, the Germans adapted the rocket engine to the V2 missiles in the World War II. But, in 1969, the same scientists would use these principles in the Apollo II which placed a man on the Moon.
An interoceanic road?
The San Cristobal hill was the core of Paulet’s urban planning project. Three roads would start there: one to Callao, as a gateway for foreigner visitors; another to Cusco, joining the old and new Capitals of Peru, and the last one to the Amazon in order to make it easy for European immigrants to settle there. This route would join another which would be built in Brazil to open an exit to the Atlantic.
Paulet was confident that tourism to the Basilica of Saint Rose of Lima, patroness of the Americas and the Philippines, would exceed what would have been invested in the works. He imagined it as the world’s biggest monument, noticeable from the sky, sea and earth. Having the San Cristobal hill as pedestal, it would be to Peru what the Statue of Liberty is to the United States. Since aviation was going to give men a new point of view, the monuments should have not only vertical harmony but also horizontal harmony, he used to say. He thought that monuments such as the Saint Peter Church in the Vatican, the Museum of Louvre in Paris or the Westminster Palace in London did not offer a great view from the sky.
A pioneer
Paulet was born in Arequipa in 1874 and educated by Hippolyte Duhamel, a French priest of the order of Saint Vincent de Paul. This priest discovered Paulet’s art and science talent, and had him apply for a scholarship to study in the Applied Chemistry Institute, in Paris. So Paulet went to Europe in a crucial moment of the world’s scientific development, in the transition from the 19th century into the 20th century.
When the cinema was being born, Paulet was inventing his rocket engine. In 1902, while the premiere of George Méliès’s Trip to the Moon, film that made fun of man’s pretention to get to the Moon, Paulet signed his spacecraft design. When he returned to Peru, at the beginning of 20thcentury, he took part in the debate, with Federico Villarreal, the scholar, and others, about which military aircraft was convenient to Peru. His project of a spacecraft was not accepted. However, he saved it for better times. These times arrived in 1927 when El Comercio published an article praising a spacecraft designed by Max Valier of the German Astronautic Society. Paulet, who was in Europe, sent a letter to the newspaper explaining why his aircraft was better than Valier’s. While in Peru Paulet’s letter didn’t arise the interest, in Germany it did.
Max Valier itself proclaimed Paulet as a pioneer of the space era. The German Astronautic Society proposed Paulet to manufacture his spacecraft. Paulet wanted to bring the German scientists to Peru. However, because of the crack in 1929, Valier wanted the politician of the moment, Adolph Hitler, to finance the project, but Paulet decided to get away. Nonetheless, it was too late; the German improved the rocket engine and manufactured V2 war missiles. Later, working with the NASA, they used the same principles in their spacecraft.
None of the huge projects that Paulet developed for Peru were implemented. Our scientific died in 1945 without seeing man step on the Moon. But we are sure that his spirit was there, encouraging that leap of humanity.
The debt to Paulet
In 1969, when the man stepped on the Moon, Frederick Ordway III, a NASA historian, stated that there was no proof that Paulet had invented in 1897 the liquid-fueled rocket-engine which made that deed possible. Thus the American Robert Goddard was recognized as the pioneer. It was also said that the Germans had copied Goddard’s design to manufacture the V2 missiles. However, this information has already been ruled out and today important authors recognize Paulet as the first one to talk of the picric acid as a liquid fuel and of the system which allowed the acid to run through the engine. Others see in his Torpedo Airplane design a first step to what today we know as a space shuttle. Finally, the NASA has recognized him more than once, but the Orway’s paper is still read on the Internet. It is now time to pay off the debt that History has to Paulet.
* Member of the Institute for Historic Airspace Studies of the Peruvian Air Force (FAP).
