In the end of 1928 Herman Potočnik published in German his sole book "Das Problem der Befahrung des Weltraums - der Raketen motor" (English "The Problem of Space Travel - The Rocket Motor"; Slovene "Problem vožnje po Vesolju - Raketni motor") in Berlin, Germany. A publisher Richard Carl Schmidt printed the year 1929 as a publishing date, probably from a pure businesslike motives so this date remained. In this book Potočnik spread a plan for a breakthrough into space and for a residence of mankind in it. He conceived a manned space station in a detail and calculated its geostationary orbit. The book has 188 pages and 100 illustrations. It was reprinted and translated into Slovene in 1986 by Slovenska matica. In 1984 a journalist Vojko Kogej found a German reprint of the book from 1938 in Berlin Staatsbibliothek in DDR. The first reprint of the book, which was issued already in 1929, was found in 2008. In 2008 Simon Zajc also discovered that Herman Potočnik wrote not only a book, but also two articles on popular science. They were published in May 1928 and September 1929 in a Viennese journal Der Getreue Eckart.

With his many ideas Potočnik became one of the founders of the astronautics. His ideas were first taken seriously only by Hermann Oberth and his co-workers, and later by Wernher von Braun and Arthur C. Clarke.

German Edition 1928

Viennese technicians misjudged him as an unreal fantast. His book influenced on the German rocket circle (Wernher von Braun) and most probably on the Russian one (Sergei Pavlovich Korolev). Partial translations of the book had already been published in English (in three editions of Science Wonder Stories: July, August and September) in 1929 and in Russian at the beginning of 1935. Full English translation has been published in 1995 by NASA. In 1999 Kogej found a Russian edition at the Russian State Library in Moscow.

Arthur C. Clarke wrote on January 15 1993 to Frederick I. Ordway III:

"PROBLEM VOZNJE PO VESOLJU

This afternoon just as I was leaving for the Otters Club to beat up the locals at table tennis, I noticed two young European backpackers hovering around my gate. Stopped to find who they were, and discovered they were a couple of Slovenes, who'd hiked here to deliver this book to me!! Do you know it? I've never seen the original, and the illustrations are fascinating. Though of course, I was familiar with some of them, notably the space station design."

Potočnik's book introduced the first full concept of geostationary telecommunication satellites, which originates from the ideas of Konstantin Eduardovitch Tsiolkovsky. The book later influenced such artistic works as Clarke's one in the magazine Wireless World, 1945 and Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, 1968. A similar concept of a space station design has been proposed by von Braun in 1953.

Tsiolkovsky's, Potočnik's and Clarke's visions of telecommunications satellites were made a reality in 1962 with the launch of Telstar. American geostationary telecommunication satellite Syncom-3 in 1964 took exactly the same position, which had been calculated by Potočnik.

Von Braun at many occasions had stressed, what is also written in French encyclopedia Larousse, that "Das Problem der Befahrung des Weltraums - der Raketen motor" was like a textbook for making of V1 and V2 rockets and afterwards of other space vehicles.

Table of Contents (from English translation 1995):
 

Introduction The Power of Gravity The Practical Gravitational Boundary of the Earth The Free Orbit Maneuvering in the Gravitational Fields of Outer Space The Armor Barrier of the Earth's Atmosphere The Highest Altitudes Reach to Date The Cannon Shot into Outer Space The Reactive Force The Reaction Vehicle The Rocket Previous Researchers Addressing the Problem of Space Flight The Travel Velocity and the Efficiency of Rocket Vehicles The Ascent General Comments about the Structure of the Space Rocket Proposals to Date Comments Regarding Previous Design Recommendations The Return to Earth Hohmann's Landing Maneuver Landing in a Force Circular Orbit Landing in Braking Ellipses Oberth's Landing Maneuver The Result to Date Two Other Important Questions The Space Rocket in an Inclined Trajectory The Space Rocket as an Airplane The Space Station in Empty Space The Nature of Gravity and How it Can be Influenced The Effect of Weightlessness on the Human Organism The Physical Behavior of Objects when

Gravity is Missing Without Air Perpetual Silence Prevails in Empty Space Sunshine During Nighttime Darkness Unlimited Visibility Without Heat Designing the Space Station The Solar Power Plant Supplying Light Supplying Air and Heat Supplying Water Long Distance Communications Means of Controlling the Space Station Partitioning the Space Station into 3 Entities The Habitat Wheel The Observatory and the Machine Room Providing for Long-Distance Communications and Safety Partitioning the Space Station into 2 Entities The Space Suit The Trip to the Space Station Special Physical Experiments Telescopes of Enormous Size Observing and Researching the Earth's Surface Exploring the Stars A Giant Floating Mirror The Most Dreadful Weapon To Distant Celestial Bodies The Technology of Space Travel Launching from the Earth's Surface The Space Station as a Base for Travel into Deep Space The Attainability of the Neighboring Planets Distant Worlds Will It Ever be Possible to Reach Fixed Stars? The Expected Course of Development of Space Travel Final Remarks

Slovenian Edition 1986


English Edition 1995