German-American rocket engineer Wernher von Braun was the first to design rocket-powered long-range ballistic missiles. But his real success was in space flight. His determination for the idea of sending people to the Moon since his childhood, and his extraordinary technical and leadership abilities, made him the greatest pioneer of the 20th century in the field of space flight.
Who Was Wernher von Braun?
Wernher von Braun was born as the son of an aristocratic family in Wirsitz (now Wyrzysk in Poland), a town in the German Empire. After World War I, his family emigrated to Berlin. When his mother, a curious amateur astronomer, gave him a telescope, young Wernher became interested in space. During this time, the space travel stories he read were fascinating to him. Von Braun studied mechanical engineering at the Charlottenburg Institute of Technology in Berlin.
There, he joined the Verein für Raumschiffahrt (VfR) (Space Travel Association) and became interested in the construction and firing of the first liquid-fueled rockets. In October 1932, Von Braun joined the German army’s ordination division, where he had the opportunity to develop and test the rockets on the firing range in Kummersdorf, near Berlin. He was appointed chief technical officer of the “Aggregat” (Team) program, whose main purpose was to design rockets to be used as long-range ballistic missiles.
Von Braun’s crew relocated to Peenemünde on the Baltic Coast in 1935. The program ran until the end of World War II (1945). Each rocket in the Aggregat program was bigger and more ambitious than the one before it. The A9/A10 missile, for example, is a two-tier, 100-ton rocket meant to attack New York, but the A12 rocket was developed as a launch vehicle capable of sending satellites into orbit.
The A-4, also known as the V-2, was the only Aggregat rocket used. Von Braun’s crew created the V-2, the world’s first medium-range ballistic missile and the first dependable liquid-propellant rocket. More than 3,000 V-2s had been launched by the conclusion of the war. After 1944, these heinous weapons wreaked havoc in England, Belgium, and France. His contributions to the construction of this weapon, as well as his Nazi Party membership, are still debated, although von Braun’s mind was always on delivering rockets into space, which was his major aim.
Abduction of von Braun, and Saturn V design
When the war ended, the US army took Wernher von Braun and his team to the United States. In 1950, von Braun settled in Huntsville, Alabama, where he led the US military rocket team. At that time, the US was afraid of the sovereignty of the Soviets in space, while the Cold War was becoming more and more evident. Throughout the 1950s, von Braun spread the notion of space travel in films, television, magazines, and books. With his “space stations“, traveling to the Moon, and Mars, he inspired the Americans with his dreams and earned great fame. The Space Age began on October 4, 1957, when the Soviet Union orbited the first satellite, Sputnik-I. This event led the US government to establish NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration). In 1958, a Redstone rocket designed by von Braun placed the first US satellite in orbit. Two years later, NASA opened the Marshall Space Center in Huntsville, where von Braun was appointed the head of the organization. In 1961, the Soviets, who sent manned vehicles to space for the first time, took the lead.
But in less than a month, the United States equalized when it sent Alan Shephard into space with a Redstone rocket designed by von Braun.
In May 1961, the President of the United States, John F. Kennedy (1917-1963), made a statement pleasing von Braun, officially declaring the government’s intention to set foot on the Moon and return safely. Indeed, the US was successful in this intention. The giant Saturn V rockets, designed by Von Braun and his team, launched the Apollo program astronauts to space and they set foot on the moon. Von Braun had finally achieved the goal of interplanetary travel, and NASA declared him “undoubtedly the greatest rocket engineer in history”.
Pioneers of the first space flight
The book that led Wernher von Braun to learn the mathematics, physics, and engineering knowledge necessary to make space travel a reality was Die Rakete zu den Planetenräumen (The Rocket Into Planetary Space), written in 1923 by the German rocket pioneer Hermann Oberth (1894-1989).
Oberth was one of three researchers who worked independently on how to use progressive rockets to go into space. The other two scientists were Russian mathematics teacher Konstantin Tsiolkovski (1857-1935) and American physicist Robert Goddard (1882-1945). In 1926, Goddard became the first man to fly a liquid-propellant rocket at his aunt’s farm in Massachusetts. However, at that time the press could not get rid of the cynical news media. However, Werhner von Braun was also an inventor and benefited from Goddard’s research in a significant part of his early work.
Quotes
- “One good test is worth a thousand expert opinions.”
- “Basic research is what I’m doing when I don’t know what I am doing.”
- “The best computer is a man, and it’s the only one that can be mass-produced by unskilled labor.”
- “The rocket worked perfectly except for landing on the wrong planet.”
- “I have learned to use the word ‘impossible’ with the greatest caution.”
- “I’m convinced that before the year 2000 is over, the first child will have been born on the moon.”
- “You can’t have a baby in one month by getting nine women pregnant. ”
- “Nature does not know extinction; all it knows is transformation. Everything science has taught me, and continues to teach me, strengthens my belief in the continuity of our spiritual existence after death.”
