Peter Bielkowicz (1 February 1902 – 30 September 1993) was a physicist. He worked on designing the

Apollo Lunar Module The Apollo Lunar Module (LM ), originally designated the Lunar Excursion Module (LEM), was the lunar lander spacecraft that was flown between lunar orbit and the Moon's surface during the United States' Apollo program. It was the first crewed ...

and many other projects. He developed and taught courses in many fields, including aerodynamics, flight mechanics,

ballistics Ballistics is the field of mechanics concerned with the launching, flight behaviour and impact effects of projectiles, especially ranged weapon munitions such as bullets, unguided bombs, rockets or the like; the science or art of designing and a ...

mathematics Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics ...

, and astrodynamics. He created the Air Force Institute of Technology (AFIT)'s first courses in space mechanics and spaceflight. He was a doctor of mathematics working in the Polish aircraft industry when Germany overran Poland. He evaded capture and made his way to France only to be overrun again by the Germans. He escaped to Spain by crossing the Pyrenees Mountains on foot and then walked through Spain. Just as he was about to step onto British soil at

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, the Spanish police arrested him. After two years in a Spanish prison, he was set free when the Allies of World War II defeated the Axis powers in Africa. He worked in the British

aircraft industry An aircraft is a vehicle that is able to fly by gaining support from the air. It counters the force of gravity by using either static lift or by using the dynamic lift of an airfoil, or in a few cases the downward thrust from jet engines ...

for a few years after the war, and later was recruited by the United States while the United States space program was still in its infancy. Professor Bielkowicz joined the faculty of the Air Force Institute of Technology School of Engineering in July 1953 as an Assistant Professor.Professor Emeritus Peter Bielkowicz
/ref> He worked on designing the

and many other projects including

reusable spacecraft A reusable spacecraft is a class of spacecraft that have been designed with repeated launch, orbit, deorbit and atmospheric reentry in mind. This contrasts with conventional spacecraft which are designed to be expended (thrown away, allowed to bur ...

. He developed and taught courses in many fields, including aerodynamics, flight mechanics,

, and astrodynamics. He created AFIT's first courses in space mechanics and spaceflight. His astrodynamics courses were a central focus of the AFIT astronautics program introduced in 1958. He also introduced orbital mechanics and familiarized his students with Moulton’s text on celestial mechanics. These classes taught missile trajectories and orbits. The

missile ballistics In military terminology, a missile is a guided airborne ranged weapon capable of self-propelled flight usually by a jet engine or rocket motor. Missiles are thus also called guided missiles or guided rockets (when a previously unguided rocket ...

class covered the

ballistic flight A sub-orbital spaceflight is a spaceflight in which the spacecraft reaches outer space, but its trajectory intersects the atmosphere or surface of the gravitating body from which it was launched, so that it will not complete one orbital re ...

solutions and various empirical solutions that had been developed.

Publications

* P. Bielkowicz, R. C. Horrigan and R. C. Walsh. "Manual onboard methods of orbit determination", Journal of Spacecraft and Rockets, Vol. 8, No. 3 (1971), pp. 284–289. https://doi.org/10.2514/3.30261 * P. Bielkowicz. "Ground tracks of earth-period /24-hr/ satellites." AIAA Journal, Vol. 4, No. 12 (1966), pp. 2190–2195. https://doi.org/10.2514/3.3875 * P. Bielkowicz, A.F.R.Ae.S., (1947) "The Evolution of Energy in Jet and Rocket Propulsion", Aircraft Engineering and Aerospace Technology, Vol. 19 Issue: 1, pp.19-26, https://doi.org/10.1108/eb031459

References

External links

Paradoxes in Astrodynamics.Air Force Institute of Technology Homepage
1902 births 1993 deaths Apollo program Polish aerospace engineers 20th-century Polish physicists {{USAF-bio-stub