During the Second World War, the Nazi war machine experimented with weapons that had never been seen before. The "project Sonnengewehr", which never came to fruition, consisted of a solar weapon placed in orbit that would be capable of sending deadly "death rays" onto the enemy.
We have already talked about the weapons that the Nazis were preparing in the middle of the last century. The "Project Sonnengewehr" was perhaps the most ambitious of all of them. Extremely advanced for its time, this true death ray made use of all the technologies that were being developed within the research centers on weapons of the Third Reich.
The small town of Hillersleben, in Germany, was chosen by Nazism to install the largest weapons research center. Located in a region dominated by hills and forests, a working group of more than 150 engineers and physicists experimented with all kinds of weapons, many of which were even used during the war.
https://old.neoteo.com/horten-ho-229-v3-el-avion-anti-radar-experimental-nazi-que-ganaria-la-guerra/In May 1945, Germany surrendered to the allies, and the Hillersleben facilities were abandoned. In this place, the allies encountered a remarkable number of weapons in different stages of development. Artillery rockets, tanks modified to launch projectiles several miles away, 600mm mortars, and a whole collection of inventions were almost ready for the battlefield.
Project Sonnengewehr
But nothing compared to the design attributed to Hermann Oberth, a physicist who would later be recognized as one of the fathers of rocketry. The project Sonnengewehr (whose translation is something like "Solar Weapon"), consisted of a platform located in Earth orbit. Among the recovered documents, a theoretical method for its construction was detailed, using modules prefabricated on Earth and then sent into space. More or less the same mechanism used for the construction of the ISS. Oberth even described how to provide artificial gravity through a rotation system.
Of all the plans Oberth had for space, the one that interested the Nazis the most was the construction of a concave mirror about three kilometers in diameter, which from Earth orbit could direct a concentrated beam of light toward its surface. Saving the distances, it was more or less what, according to legend, Archimedes did to burn enemy ships 2200 years earlier.
German scientists, using Oberth's concepts, came to the conclusion that they should place their mirror at an altitude of about 8200 kilometers. The material to be used would be metallic sodium, abundant in nature and with a great capacity to reflect light. The fact that moisture turns it into something extremely unstable was not a problem: in space there are simply no water molecules that could interfere with its operation.
An improved version of the V2 rockets would be responsible for carrying the mirror pieces one by one into space. Under the code name V11, and designed by Wernher von Braun, the rocket that would replace the V2 would not only carry man into space but could even bomb the United States just as the V2 did to England.
The Nazi orbital mirror would have a zone dedicated to housing the astronauts in charge of operating it. There are details that may even seem amusing today, but 60 or 70 years ago, space and the lack of gravity were practically unknown. For example, it was planned to obtain the necessary electrical energy from a kind of dynamos powered by solar radiation. The astronauts would use magnetic boots to move around the floor of the space station, and oxygen would be provided by a greenhouse. A pumpkin plantation would convert the CO2 released by the astronauts into breathable oxygen.
The crew would receive encrypted instructions by radio, and through a mechanism would direct the mirror toward the terrestrial target. The enemy could not defend itself since it did not have the technology capable of reaching and destroying the Sonnengewehr.
Fortunately, none of this was ever built. The arrival of the allies in 1945 ended the Nazi plans to build their own "Death Star", although it is possible that the technical difficulties due to the lack of technology of the time would have made the project unfeasible. In fact, it is very likely that the beam generated in the mirror would diffuse so much when passing through the atmosphere that when it reached the ground it would be nothing more than an annoying glow.
https://old.neoteo.com/fuerza-t-cazadores-de-tecnologia-nazi/Many of the German scientists, including Oberth and Wernher von Braun themselves, moved to the USA to continue their rocket research. In some way, the V2 technology that served to devastate London would be responsible for giving life to the Saturn V that took the astronauts of Apollo to the Moon.
