Vom Dschungel, ins Weltall! - A German space program in Africa

✉️ Briefing: May 17th 1977: a strange rocket is successfully launched from the Katanga province, a Zairian territory. 27 years before Space X’s, the German company OTRAG (Orbital Transport und Raketen AG) is founded by Lutz Kayser and seven European investors. It’s the first commercial developer and producer of space launch vehicles, and its objective is simple: be an inexpensive alternative to the European rocket Ariane and the NASA Space Shuttle. After months of design in Europe, advised by Dr. Wernher von Braun himself, the rocket is now a thing. Consisting of a modular design made of individual pipes, each 27 cm in diameter and six meters long, four of these pipes would be installed one above the other resulting in a 24 meter long fuel and oxidizer tank with a rocket engine at the lower end making up a CRPU. It’s supposed to carry up to two tons of freight, the usual weight of a communications satellite into a geostationary orbit. March 26th 1976, an agreement is signed with th