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Wernher Magnus Maximilian, Freiherr von Braun (March 23, 1912 – June 16, 1977) was a
German rocket scientist,
aerospace engineer,
space architect, and one of the leading figures in the development of
rocket technology in
Nazi Germany during
World War II and in the
United States after that.
A former member of the Nazi party, commissioned Sturmbannführer of the paramilitary SS and decorated Nazi war hero, von Braun would later be regarded as the preeminent rocket engineer of the 20th century in his role with the United States civilian space agency NASA. In his 20s and early 30s, von Braun was the central figure in Germany's rocket development program, responsible for the design and realization of the deadly V-2 combat rocket during World War II. After the war, he and some of his rocket team were taken to the U.S. as part of the then-secret Operation Paperclip. Von Braun worked on the US Army intermediate range ballistic missile (IRBM) program before his group was assimilated by NASA, under which he served as director of the newly-formed Marshall Space Flight Center and as the chief architect of the Saturn V launch vehicle, the superbooster that propelled the Apollo spacecraft to the Moon. According to one NASA source, he is "without doubt, the greatest rocket scientist in history. His crowning achievement was to lead the development of the Saturn V booster rocket that helped land the first men on the Moon in July 1969." In 1975 he received the National Medal of Science.
Early life
Wernher von Braun was born in
Wirsitz (
Wyrzysk),
Province of Posen, then a part of the
German Empire, and was the second of three sons. He belonged to an
aristocratic family, inheriting the German title of
Freiherr (equivalent to
Baron). His father, conservative civil servant
Magnus Freiherr von Braun (1878–1972), served as a Minister of Agriculture in the Federal Cabinet during the
Weimar Republic. His mother, Emmy von Quistorp (1886–1959), could trace her ancestry through both parents to medieval European
royalty, a descendant of
Philip III of France,
Valdemar I of Denmark,
Robert III of Scotland, and
Edward III of England. Von Braun had a younger brother, also named
Magnus Freiherr von Braun. After Wernher von Braun's
Lutheran confirmation, his mother gave him a
telescope, and he developed a passion for
astronomy. When
Wyrzysk was transferred to
Poland at the end of
World War I, his family, like many other German families, moved to
Germany. They settled in
Berlin, where 12-year-old von Braun, inspired by speed records established by
Max Valier and
Fritz von Opel in rocket-propelled cars,
Beginning in 1925, von Braun attended a boarding school at Ettersburg Castle near Weimar where he did not do well in physics and mathematics. In 1928 his parents moved him to the Hermann-Lietz-Internat (also a residential school) on the East Frisian North Sea island of Spiekeroog. There he acquired a copy of Die Rakete zu den Planetenräumen (1929) (By Rocket into Interplanetary Space) (in German) by rocket pioneer Hermann Oberth. Space travel had always fascinated von Braun, and from then on he applied himself to physics and mathematics to pursue his interest in rocket engineering.
In 1930 he attended the Technical University of Berlin, where he joined the Verein für Raumschiffahrt (VfR, the "Spaceflight Society") and assisted Willy Ley in his liquid-fueled rocket motor tests in conjunction with Hermann Oberth. He also studied at ETH Zurich. Although he worked mainly on military rockets in his later years there, space travel remained his primary interest.
The following episode from the early 1930s is telling in this respect. At this time von Braun attended a presentation given by Auguste Piccard. After the talk the young student approached the famous pioneer of high-altitude balloon flight, and stated to him: "You know, I plan on travelling to the Moon at some time." Piccard is said to have responded with encouraging words.
He was greatly influenced by Oberth, and he said of him:
German career
The Prussian rocketeer and working under the Nazis
,
Wilhelm von Leeb, and von Braun at Peenemünde, 1941]]
Von Braun was working on his creative doctorate when the National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP, or Nazi party) came to power in a coalition government in Germany; rocketry almost immediately became part of the national agenda. An artillery captain, Walter Dornberger, arranged an Ordnance Department research grant for Von Braun, who then worked next to Dornberger's existing solid-fuel rocket test site at Kummersdorf. He was awarded a doctorate in physics (aerospace engineering) on July 27, 1934 from the University of Berlin for a thesis titled About Combustion Tests; his doctoral advisor was Erich Schumann. However, this thesis was only the public part of von Braun's work. His actual full thesis, Construction, Theoretical, and Experimental Solution to the Problem of the Liquid Propellant Rocket (dated April 16, 1934) was kept classified by the army, and was not published until 1960. By the end of 1934, his group had successfully launched two rockets that rose to heights of 2.2 and 3.5 kilometers.
At the time, Germany was highly interested in American physicist Robert H. Goddard's research. Before 1939, German scientists occasionally contacted Goddard directly with technical questions. Wernher von Braun used Goddard's plans from various journals and incorporated them into the building of the Aggregat (A) series of rockets. The A-4 rocket is the well known V-2. In 1963, von Braun reflected on the history of rocketry, and said of Goddard's work: "His rockets ... may have been rather crude by present-day standards, but they blazed the trail and incorporated many features used in our most modern rockets and space vehicles." Goddard confirmed his work was used by von Braun in 1944, shortly before the Nazis began firing V-2s at England. A V2 crashed in Sweden and some parts were sent to an Annapolis lab where Goddard was doing research for the Navy. If this was the so-called Bäckebo Bomb, it had been procured by the British in exchange for Spitfires; Annapolis would have received some parts from them. Goddard is reported to have recognized components he had invented, and inferred that his brainchild had been turned into a weapon.
There were no German rocket societies after the collapse of the VFR, and civilian rocket tests were forbidden by the new Nazi regime. Only military development was allowed and to this end, a larger facility was erected at the village of Peenemünde in northern Germany on the Baltic Sea. This location was chosen partly on the recommendation of von Braun's mother, who recalled her father's duck-hunting expeditions there. Dornberger became the military commander at Peenemünde, with von Braun as technical director. In collaboration with the Luftwaffe, the Peenemünde group developed liquid-fuel rocket engines for aircraft and jet-assisted takeoffs. They also developed the long-range A-4 ballistic missile and the supersonic Wasserfall anti-aircraft missile.
In November 1937 (other sources: December 1, 1932), von Braun joined the National Socialist German Workers Party. An Office of Military Government, United States document dated April 23, 1947, states that von Braun joined the Waffen-SS (Schutzstaffel) horseback riding school in 1933, then the National Socialist Party on May 1, 1937, and became an officer in the Waffen-SS from May 1940 until the end of the war.
Amongst his comments about his NSDAP membership von Braun has said:
I was officially demanded to join the National Socialist Party. At this time (1937) I was already technical director of the Army Rocket Center at Peenemünde ... My refusal to join the party would have meant that I would have to abandon the work of my life. Therefore, I decided to join. My membership in the party did not involve any political activities ... in Spring 1940, one SS-Standartenführer (SS Colonel) Müller ... looked me up in my office at Peenemünde and told me that Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler had sent him with the order to urge me to join the SS. I called immediately on my military superior ... Major-General W. Dornberger. He informed me that ... if I wanted to continue our mutual work, I had no alternative but to join.
That claim has been often disputed because in 1940, the Waffen-SS had shown no interest in Peenemünde yet. Also, the assertion that persons in von Braun's position were pressured to join the Nazi party, let alone the SS, has been disputed. When shown a picture of him behind Himmler, Braun claimed to have worn the SS uniform only that time, but in 2002 a former SS officer at Peenemünde told the BBC that von Braun had regularly worn the SS uniform to official meetings; it should be noted that this was a mandatory requirement. He began as an Untersturmführer (Second Lieutenant) and was promoted three times by Himmler, the last time in June 1943 to SS-Sturmbannführer (Wehrmacht Major). Von Braun claimed this was a technical promotion received each year regularly by mail. In Germany at this time, this was an exceptional promotion for an engineer who was only 31 years old.
By that time the British and Soviet intelligence agencies were aware of the rocket program and von Braun's team at Peenemünde. Over the nights of 17 and 18 August 1943 RAF Bomber Command's Operation Hydra dispatched raids on the Peenemünde camp consisting of 596 aircraft and dropping 1,800 tons of explosives. The facility was salvaged and most of the science team remained unharmed; however, the raids killed von Braun's engine designer Walter Thiel and Chief Engineer Walther, and the rocket program was delayed.
The first combat A-4, renamed the V-2 (Vergeltungswaffe 2 "Retaliation/Vengeance Weapon 2") for propaganda purposes, was launched toward England on September 7, 1944, only 21 months after the project had been officially commissioned. Von Braun's interest in rockets was specifically for the application of space travel, which led him to say on hearing the news from London: "The rocket worked perfectly except for landing on the wrong planet." He described it as his "darkest day". However, satirist Mort Sahl is often credited with mocking von Braun with the paraphrase "I aim at the stars, but sometimes I hit London". In fact that line appears in the film I Aim at the Stars, a 1960 biopic on von Braun.
Experiments with rocket aircraft
During 1936 von Braun's rocketry team working at Kummersdorf investigated installing liquid-fuelled rockets in aircraft.
Ernst Heinkel enthusiastically supported their efforts, supplying a
He 72 and later two
He 112s for the experiments. Late in 1936
Erich Warsitz was seconded by the
RLM to Wernher von Braun and Ernst Heinkel, because he had been recognized as one of the most experienced test-pilots of the time, and because he also had an extraordinary fund of technical knowledge. After von Braun familiarized Warsitz with a test-stand run, showing him the corresponding apparatus in the aircraft, he asked:
“Are you with us and will you test the rocket in the air? Then, Warsitz, you will be a famous man. And later we will fly to the moon – with you at the helm!”
In June 1937, at Neuhardenberg (a large field about 70 kilometres east of Berlin, listed as a reserve airfield in the event of war), one of these latter aircraft was flown with its piston engine shut down during flight by test pilot Erich Warsitz, at which time it was propelled by von Braun’s rocket power alone. Despite the wheels-up landing and having the fuselage on fire, it proved to official circles that an aircraft could be flown satisfactorily with a back-thrust system through the rear.
At the same time, Hellmuth Walter's experiments into Hydrogen peroxide-based rockets were leading towards light and simple rockets that appeared well-suited for aircraft installation. Also the firm of Hellmuth Walter at Kiel had been commissioned by the RLM to build a rocket engine for the He 112, so there were two different new rocket motor designs at Neuhardenberg: whereas von Braun’s engines were powered by alcohol and liquid oxygen, Walter engines had hydrogen peroxide and calcium permanganate as a catalyst. Von Braun’s engines used direct combustion and created fire, the Walter devices used hot vapours from a chemical reaction, but both created thrust and provided high speed. The subsequent flights with the He 112 used the Walter-rocket instead of von Braun's; it was more reliable, simpler to operate and the dangers to test-pilot Erich Warsitz and machine were less.
Slave labor
SS General
Hans Kammler, who as an
engineer had constructed several
concentration camps including
Auschwitz, had a reputation for brutality and had originated the idea of using
concentration camp prisoners as slave laborers in the rocket program.
Arthur Rudolph, chief engineer of the V-2 rocket factory at Peenemünde, endorsed this idea in April 1943 when a labor shortage developed. More people died building the V-2 rockets than were killed by it as a weapon. Von Braun admitted visiting the plant at
Mittelwerk on many occasions, and called conditions at the plant "repulsive", but claimed never to have witnessed any deaths or beatings, although it had become clear to him by 1944 that deaths had occurred. He denied ever having visited the
Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp itself, where 20,000 died from illness, beatings, hangings and intolerable working conditions.
On August 15, 1944, von Braun wrote a letter to Albin Sawatzki, manager of the V-2 production, admitting that he personally picked labor slaves from the Buchenwald concentration camp, who, he admitted 25 years later in an interview, had been in a "pitiful shape".
Others claim von Braun engaged in brutal treatment or approved of it. Guy Morand, a French resistance fighter who was a prisoner in Dora, testified in 1995 that after an apparent sabotage attempt:
Without even listening to my explanations, [von Braun] ordered the Meister to have me given 25 strokes...Then, judging that the strokes weren't sufficiently hard, he ordered I be flogged more vigorously...von Braun made me translate that I deserved much more, that in fact I deserved to be hanged...I would say his cruelty, of which I was personally a victim, are, I would say, an eloquent testimony to his Nazi fanaticism.
Robert Cazabonne, another French prisoner, testified that von Braun stood by and watched as prisoners were hung by chains from hoists. Von Braun claimed he "never saw any kind of abuse or killing" and only "heard rumors...that some prisoners had been hanged in the underground galleries".
Arrest and release by the Nazi regime
According to
André Sellier, a French historian and survivor of the
Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp,
Himmler had von Braun come to his
Hochwald HQ in
East Prussia in February 1944. To increase his power-base within the Nazi régime, Heinrich Himmler was conspiring to use Kammler to gain control of all German armament programs, including the V-2 program at Peenemünde. He therefore recommended that von Braun work more closely with Kammler to solve the problems of the V-2, but von Braun claimed to have replied that the problems were merely technical and he was confident that they would be solved with Dornberger's assistance.
Apparently von Braun had been under SD surveillance since October 1943. A report stated that he and his colleagues Riedel and Gröttrup were said to have expressed regret at an engineer's house one evening that they were not working on a spaceship and that they felt the war was not going well; this was considered a "defeatist" attitude. A young female dentist who was an SS spy reported their comments. 1944 and was taken to a Gestapo cell in Stettin (now Szczecin, Poland),
While on an official trip in March, von Braun suffered a complicated fracture of his left arm and shoulder after his driver fell asleep at the wheel. His injuries were serious, but he insisted that his arm be set in a cast so he could leave the hospital. Due to this neglect of the injury he had to be hospitalized again a month later where his bones had to be re-broken and re-aligned. After the surrender, von Braun spoke to the press:
"We knew that we had created a new means of warfare, and the question as to what nation, to what victorious nation we were willing to entrust this brainchild of ours was a moral decision more than anything else. We wanted to see the world spared another conflict such as Germany had just been through, and we felt that only by surrendering such a weapon to people who are guided by the Bible could such an assurance to the world be best secured.”
The American high command was well aware of how important their catch was: von Braun had been at the top of the Black List, the code name for the list of German scientists and engineers targeted for immediate interrogation by U.S. military experts. On June 19, 1945, two days before the scheduled handover of the area to the Soviets, US Army Major Robert B. Staver, Chief of the Jet Propulsion Section of the Research and Intelligence Branch of the U.S. Army Ordnance Corps in London, and Lt Col R. L. Williams took von Braun and his department chiefs by jeep from Garmisch to Munich. The group was flown to Nordhausen, and was evacuated southwest to Witzenhausen, a small town in the American Zone, the next day. Von Braun was briefly detained at the "Dustbin" interrogation center at Kransberg Castle where the elite of the Third Reich's economy, science and technology were debriefed by U.S. and British intelligence officials. Initially he was recruited to the U.S. under a program called "Operation Overcast," subsequently known as Operation Paperclip.
American career
U.S. Army career
On June 20, 1945,
U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull approved the transfer of von Braun and his specialists to America; however this was not announced to the public until October 1, 1945. Von Braun was among those scientists for whom the U.S. Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency created false employment histories and expunged Nazi Party memberships and regime affiliations from the public record. Once “bleached” of their Nazism, the US Government granted the scientists security clearance to work in the United States. "Paperclip," the project’s operational name, derived from the paperclips used to attach the scientists’ new political personæ to their “US Government Scientist” personnel files.
, wife of Wernher von Braun]]
The first seven technicians arrived in the United States at New Castle Army Air Field, just south of Wilmington, Delaware, on September 20, 1945. They were then flown to Boston and taken by boat to the Army Intelligence Service post at Fort Strong in Boston Harbor. Later, with the exception of von Braun, the men were transferred to Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland to sort out the Peenemünde documents, enabling the scientists to continue their rocketry experiments.
Finally, von Braun and his remaining Peenemünde staff (see List of German rocket scientists in the United States) were transferred to their new home at Fort Bliss, Texas, a large Army installation just north of El Paso. Von Braun would later write he found it hard to develop a "genuine emotional attachment" to his new surroundings. His chief design engineer Walther Reidel became the subject of a December 1946 article "German Scientist Says American Cooking Tasteless; Dislikes Rubberized Chicken,' exposing the presence of von Braun's team in the country and drawing criticism from Albert Einstein and John Dingell. The Jupiter-C successfully launched the West's first satellite, Explorer 1, on January 31, 1958. This event signaled the birth of America's space program.
Despite the work on the Redstone rocket, the twelve years from 1945 to 1957 were probably some of the most frustrating for von Braun and his colleagues. In the Soviet Union, Sergei Korolev and his team of scientists and engineers plowed ahead with several new rocket designs and the Sputnik program, while the American government was not very interested in von Braun's work or views and only embarked on a very modest rocket-building program. In the meantime, the press tended to dwell on von Braun's past as a member of the SS and the slave labor used to build his V-2 rockets.
Popular concepts for a human presence in space
Repeating the pattern he had established during his earlier career in Germany, von Braun – while directing military rocket development in the real world – continued to entertain his engineer-scientist's dream of a future world in which rockets would be used for
space exploration. However, instead of risking being sacked, he now was increasingly in a position to popularize these ideas. The May 14, 1950 headline of
The Huntsville Times ("Dr. von Braun Says Rocket Flights Possible to Moon") might have marked the beginning of these efforts. These disclosures rode a moonflight publicity wave that was created by the two 1950 U.S. science fiction films,
Destination Moon and
Rocketship X-M.
In 1952, von Braun first published his concept of a manned space station in a Collier's Weekly magazine series of articles entitled "Man Will Conquer Space Soon!". These articles were illustrated by the space artist Chesley Bonestell and were influential in spreading his ideas. Frequently von Braun worked with fellow German-born space advocate and science writer Willy Ley to publish his concepts, which, unsurprisingly, were heavy on the engineering side and anticipated many technical aspects of space flight that later became reality.
The space station (to be constructed using rockets with recoverable and reusable ascent stages) would be a toroid structure, with a diameter of 250 feet (76 m). The space station would spin around a central docking nave to provide artificial gravity, and would be assembled in a 1,075 mile (1,730 km) two-hour, high-inclination Earth orbit allowing observation of essentially every point on earth on at least a daily basis. The ultimate purpose of the space station would be to provide an assembly platform for manned lunar expeditions. The notion of a rotating wheel-shaped station was introduced in 1929 by Herman Potočnik in his book The Problem of Space Travel - The Rocket Motor. More than a decade later, the movie version of would draw heavily on the design concept in its visualization of an orbital space station.
Von Braun envisaged these expeditions as very large-scale undertakings, with a total of 50 astronauts travelling in three huge spacecraft (two for crew, one primarily for cargo), each long and in diameter and driven by a rectangular array of 30 rocket propulsion engines. Upon arrival, astronauts would establish a permanent lunar base in the Sinus Roris region by using the emptied cargo holds of their craft as shelters, and would explore their surroundings for eight weeks. This would include a 400 km expedition in pressurized rovers to the crater Harpalus and the Mare Imbrium foothills.
and von Braun, seen in 1954 holding a model of his passenger ship, collaborated on a series of three educational films.]]
At this time von Braun also worked out preliminary concepts for a manned Mars mission that used the space station as a staging point. His initial plans, published in The Mars Project (1952), had envisaged a fleet of ten spacecraft (each with a mass of 3,720 metric tons), three of them unmanned and each carrying one 200-ton winged lander in addition to cargo, and nine crew vehicles transporting a total of 70 astronauts. Gigantic as this mission plan was, its engineering and astronautical parameters were thoroughly calculated. A later project was much more modest, using only one purely orbital cargo ship and one crewed craft. In each case, the expedition would use minimum-energy Hohmann transfer orbits for its trips to Mars and back to Earth.
Before technically formalizing his thoughts on human spaceflight to Mars, von Braun had written a science fiction novel, set in 1980, on the subject. According to his biographer, Erik Bergaust, the manuscript was rejected by no less than 18 publishers. Von Braun later published small portions of this opus in magazines, to illustrate selected aspects of his Mars project popularizations. The complete manuscript, titled Project MARS: A Technical Tale, did not appear as a printed book until December 2006.
In the hope that its involvement would bring about greater public interest in the future of the space program, von Braun also began working with Walt Disney and the Disney studios as a technical director, initially for three television films about space exploration. The initial broadcast devoted to space exploration was Man in Space, which first went on air on March 9, 1955, drawing 42 million viewers and unofficially the second-highest rated television show in American history.
Later (in 1959) von Braun published a short booklet -- condensed from episodes that had appeared in This Week Magazine before—describing his updated concept of the first manned lunar landing. The scenario included only a single and relatively small spacecraft—a winged lander with a crew of only two experienced pilots who had already circumnavigated the moon on an earlier mission. The brute-force direct ascent flight schedule used a rocket design with five sequential stages, loosely based on the Nova designs that were under discussion at this time. After a night launch from a Pacific island the first three stages would bring the spacecraft (with the two remaining upper stages attached) to terrestrial escape velocity, with each burn creating an acceleration of 8-9 times standard gravity. Residual propellant in the third stage would be used for the deceleration intended to commence only a few hundred kilometers above the landing site in a crater near the lunar north pole. The fourth stage provided acceleration to lunar escape velocity while the fifth stage would be responsible for a deceleration during return to the Earth to a residual speed that allows aerocapture of the spacecraft ending in a runway landing, much in the way of the Space Shuttle. One remarkable feature of this technical tale is that the engineer Wernher von Braun anticipated a medical phenomenon that would become apparent only years later: being a veteran astronaut with no history of serious adverse reactions to weightlessness offers no protection against becoming unexpectedly and violently spacesick.
at Redstone Arsenal in 1963]]
engines of the Saturn V first stage at the US Space and Rocket Center]]
Concepts for orbital warfare
Von Braun developed and published his space station concept during the very "coldest" time of the
Cold War, when the U.S. government for which he worked put the containment of the Soviet Union above everything else. The fact that his space station – if armed with missiles that could be easily adapted from those already available at this time – would give the United States space superiority in both orbital and
orbit-to-ground warfare did not escape him. Although von Braun took care to qualify such military applications as "particularly dreadful" in his popular writings, he elaborated on them in several of his books and articles. This much less peaceful aspect of von Braun's "drive for space" has recently been reviewed by Michael J. Neufeld from the Space History Division of the
National Air and Space Museum in Washington.
NASA career
The
U.S. Navy had been tasked with building a rocket to lift satellites into orbit, but the resulting
Vanguard rocket launch system was unreliable. In 1957, with the launch of
Sputnik 1, there was a growing belief within the United States that America lagged behind the Soviet Union in the emerging
Space Race. American authorities then chose to utilize von Braun and his German team's experience with missiles to create an orbital launch vehicle, something von Braun had originally proposed in 1954 but had been denied. Presiding from July 1960 to February 1970, von Braun became the center's first Director.
, Von Braun,
George Mueller, and Lt. Gen.
Samuel C. Phillips in the Launch Control Center following the successful
Apollo 11 liftoff on July 16, 1969]]
The Marshall Center's first major program was the development of
Saturn rockets to carry heavy
payloads into and beyond
Earth orbit. From this, the
Apollo program for manned moon flights was developed. Wernher von Braun initially pushed for a flight engineering concept that called for an
Earth orbit rendezvous technique (the approach he had argued for building his space station), but in 1962 he converted to the more risky
lunar orbit rendezvous concept that was subsequently realized. During Apollo, he worked closely with former Peenemünde teammate,
Kurt H. Debus, the first director of the Kennedy Space Center. His dream to help mankind set foot on the
Moon became a reality on July 16, 1969 when a Marshall-developed
Saturn V rocket launched the crew of
Apollo 11 on its historic eight-day mission. Over the course of the program, Saturn V rockets enabled six teams of astronauts to reach the surface of the Moon.
During the late 1960s, von Braun was instrumental in the development of the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville. The desk from which he guided America's entry in the Space Race remains on display there.
During the local summer of 1966–67, von Braun participated in a field trip to Antarctica, organized for him and several other members of top NASA management. The goal of the field trip was to determine whether the experience gained by US scientific and technological community during the exploration of Antarctic wastelands would be useful for the manned exploration of space. Von Braun was mainly interested in management of the scientific effort on Antarctic research stations, logistics, habitation and life support, and in using the barren Antarctic terrain like the glacial dry valleys to test the equipment that one day would be used to look for signs of life on Mars and other worlds.
In an internal memo dated January 16, 1969, von Braun had confirmed to his staff that he would stay on as a center director at Huntsville to head the Apollo Applications Program. A few months later, on occasion of the first moon-landing, he publicly expressed his optimism that the Saturn V carrier system would continue to be developed, advocating manned missions to Mars in the 1980s.
However, on March 1, 1970, von Braun and his family relocated to Washington, D.C., when he was assigned the post of NASA's Deputy Associate Administrator for Planning at NASA Headquarters. After a series of conflicts associated with the truncation of the Apollo program, and facing severe budget constraints, von Braun retired from NASA on May 26, 1972. Not only had it become evident by this time that his and NASA's visions for future U.S. space flight projects were incompatible; it was perhaps even more frustrating for him to see popular support for a continued presence of man in space wane dramatically once the goal to reach the moon had been accomplished.
, the first and third Marshall Space Flight Center directors, viewing a Spacelab model in 1974]]
Dr. von Braun also developed the idea of a Space Camp that would train children in fields of science and space technologies as well as help their mental development much the same way sports camps aim at improving physical development.
Career after NASA
After leaving NASA, von Braun became Vice President for Engineering and Development at the aerospace company,
Fairchild Industries in
Germantown, Maryland on July 1, 1972.
In 1973 a routine health check revealed kidney cancer, which during the following years could not be controlled by surgery. Von Braun continued his work to the extent possible, which included accepting invitations to speak at colleges and universities as he was eager to cultivate interest in human spaceflight and rocketry, particularly with students and a new generation of engineers. On one such visit in the spring of 1974 to Allegheny College, von Braun revealed a more personal, down-to-earth side of himself as a man in his early 60s, beyond the public persona most saw, including an all-too-human allergy to feather pillows and a subtle, if not humorous disdain for some rock music of the era.
Von Braun helped establish and promote the National Space Institute, a precursor of the present-day National Space Society, in 1975, and became its first president and chairman. In 1976, he became scientific consultant to Lutz Kayser, the CEO of OTRAG, and a member of the Daimler-Benz board of directors. However, his deteriorating health forced him to retire from Fairchild on December 31, 1976. When the 1975 National Medal of Science was awarded to him in early 1977 he was hospitalized, and unable to attend the White House ceremony.
(Alexandria, Virginia)]]
Death
On June 16, 1977, Wernher von Braun died of
pancreatic cancer in
Alexandria, Virginia, at the age of 65. He was buried at the
Ivy Hill Cemetery in
Alexandria, Virginia.
Published works
The proposed vertical take-off interceptor for climbing to 35,000 ft in 60 seconds was rejected by the Luftwaffe in the autumn of 1941 and never produced. (The differing Bachem Ba 349 was produced during the 1944 Emergency Fighter Program.)
A science- and engineering-oriented Gymnasium in Friedberg, Bavaria was named after Wernher von Braun in 1979. In response to rising criticism, a school committee decided in 1995, after lengthy deliberations, to keep the name but "to address von Braun's ambiguity in the advanced history classes."
An avenue in the Annadale section of Staten Island, New York was named for him in 1977.
Von Braun's engineering approach was very conservative, building in additional strength to structure designs, a point of contention with other engineers who struggled to keep vehicle weight down. Von Braun's insistence on further tests after
Mercury-Redstone 2 flew higher than planned, has been identified as contributing to the Soviet Union's success in launching the
first human in space.
Summary of SS career
SS number: 185,068
Nazi Party number: 5,738,692
Dates of rank
SS-Anwärter: November 1, 1933 (received rank upon joining SS Riding School)
SS-Mann: July 1934
(left SS after graduation from the school; commissioned in 1940 with date of entry backdated to 1934)
SS-Untersturmführer: May 1, 1940
SS-Obersturmführer: November 9, 1941
SS-Hauptsturmführer: November 9, 1942
SS-Sturmbannführer: June 28, 1943
Deutsches Bundesverdienstkreuz in 1959
Smithsonian Langley Medal in 1967
NASA Distinguished Service Medal in 1969
National Medal of Science in 1975
Werner von Siemens Ring in 1975
Civitan International World Citizenship Award in 1970
Quotations
On surrendering with his rocket team to the Americans in 1945: "We knew that we had created a new means of warfare, and the question as to what nation, to what victorious nation we were willing to entrust this brainchild of ours was a moral decision more than anything else. We wanted to see the world spared another conflict such as Germany had just been through, and we felt that only by surrendering such a weapon to people who are guided by the
Bible could such an assurance to the world be best secured."
"All of man's scientific and engineering efforts will be in vain unless they are performed and utilized within a framework of ethical standards commensurate with the magnitude of the scope of the technological revolution. The more technology advances, the more fateful will be its impact on humanity."
"You must accept one of two basic premises: Either we are alone in the universe, or we are not alone in the universe. And either way, the implications are staggering".
"If the world's ethical standards fail to rise with the advances of our technological revolution, the world will go to hell. Let us remember that in the horse-and-buggy days nobody got hurt if the coachman had a drink too many. In our times of high-powered automobiles, however, that same drink may be fatal...."
On Adolf Hitler: "I began to see the shape of the man – his brilliance, the tremendous force of personality. It gripped you somehow. But also you could see his flaw — he was wholly without scruples, a godless man who thought himself the only god, the only authority he needed."
"Science and religion are not antagonists. On the contrary, they are sisters. While science tries to learn more about the creation, religion tries to better understand the Creator. While through science man tries to harness the forces of nature around him, through religion he tries to harness the force of nature within him."
"My experiences with science led me to God. They challenge science to prove the existence of God. But must we really light a candle to see the sun?"
"Late to bed, early to rise, work like hell and advertise."
In popular culture
;Film and television
:
Von Braun has been featured in a number of movies and television shows or series about the space race:
I Aim at the Stars (1960), also titled Wernher von Braun and Ich greife nach den Sternen ("I Reach for the Stars"); von Braun played by Curd Jürgens. Satirist Mort Sahl suggested the subtitle "But Sometimes I Hit London".
From the Earth to the Moon (TV, 1998): von Braun played by Norbert Weisser.
October Sky (1999): this film portrays U.S. rocket scientist Homer Hickam, who as a teenager admired von Braun (played by Joe Digaetano). The film's title, October Sky, is an anagram of the autobiography it was based on: Rocket Boys.
Space Race (TV, BBC co-production with NDR (Germany), Channel One TV (Russia) and National Geographic TV (USA), 2005): von Braun played by Richard Dillane.
The Lost Von Braun, a documentary by Aron Ranen. Interviews with Ernst Stuhlinger, Konrad Dannenberg, Karl Sendler, Alex Baum, Eli Rosenbaum (DOJ) and Von Braun's NASA secretary Bonnie Holmes.
Wernher von Braun - Rocket Man for War and Peace A three part (
part1,
part 2,
part 3) documentary - in English - from the German International channel
DW-TV. Original German version
Wernher von Braun - Der Mann für die Wunderwaffen by the Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk.
:Several fictional characters have been modeled on von Braun:
The Right Stuff (1983): The Chief Scientist, played by Scott Beach, was clearly modeled on von Braun.
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964): Dr Strangelove is usually held to be based at least partly on von Braun.
Alphaville, une étrange aventure de Lemmy Caution (1965, directed by Jean-Luc Godard): Howard Vernon plays Professor von Braun (also known as Leonard Nosferatu), the inventor of the "Alpha 60" super-computer that rules Alphaville.
In Diamonds Are Forever (1971), the seventh James Bond film, the supervillain Ernst Stavro Blofeld employs a German scientist resembling von Braun, named Professor Dr. Metz, a pacifist who is duped by Blofeld's rhetoric, who works in a NASA-style research lab in the Nevada desert. The lab is ambiguously depicted as being involved in faking the moon landings (an apparent joking nod to conspiracy theorists, and which figures in some versions of their theories).
:There are other references to von Braun in film and on television:
Mobile Suit Gundam (1979): The largest Lunar city in the Universal Century era is called 'Von Braun City'. The city is the home of Anaheim Electronics, is a strategic point in space, and is built around Neil Armstrong's footprint in the Apollo missions.
Mababangong Bangungot (Perfumed Nightmare) (1977): Director and star Kidlat Tahimik is president of a Wernher von Braun club and is fascinated with "First World" progress, particularly von Braun's efforts in the U.S. space program.
Planetes (TV, 2004): There is an upcoming exploratory mission to Jupiter on a new fusion powered ship, the Von Braun.
Alien Planet (TV, 2005): A spacecraft, named Von Braun, is named after him.
In Back to the Future Part III, character "Doc" Emmett Brown reveals a possible relation to von Braun by saying that his paternal side of the family arrived in Hill Valley, California in 1908 - "when they were still called von Braun!"
;Print media
In an issue of Mad Magazine in the late 1950s, artist Wallace Wood depicted von Braun at the launch of a rocket, ready to listen to a radio transmitting the rocket's signals. Suddenly he says, "HIMMEL! Vas ist los?" and then explains, "Vat iss wrong is vit der RADIO! It iss AC...und der control room iss DC!"
In Warren Ellis' graphic novel Ministry of Space, von Braun is a supporting character, settling in Britain after World War II, and being essential for the realization of the British Space Program.
;Literature
The Good German by Joseph Kanon. Von Braun and other scientists are said to have been implicated in the use of slave labour at Peenemünde; their transfer to the US forms part of the narrative.
Space by James Michener. Von Braun and other German scientists are brought to the US and form a vital part of the US efforts to reach space.
Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon. The highly notable novel involved British intelligence attempting to avert and predict V-2 rocket attacks. The work even includes a gyroscopic equation for the V2. The first portion of the novel, "Beyond The Zero", begins with a quote from von Braun: "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."
New Dictionary, a short story by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. in his collection Welcome to the Monkey House, notes Von Braun as one of the things an old dictionary does not mention.
Mother Night, by Kurt Vonnegut, has a scene in which a character reads a Life magazine with von Braun on the cover.
Dora by Jean Michel. This is not a novel, but a memoir referring to the Mittelbau-Dora V-2 slave labour camps, by Jean Michel and Louis Nucéra.
Rocket Boys by Homer Hickam, Jr. The movie October Sky was based on this memoir about a boy, Sonny (in the movie, he's called Homer) Hickam, who lives in a small West Virginia coal town and builds rockets and greatly admires von Braun. Although not directly concerned with von Braun, it is a vivid picture of popular attitudes toward rocket science and von Braun during the early days of the U. S. space program.
;Music
Wernher von Braun (1965): A song written and performed by Tom Lehrer for an episode of NBC's American version of the BBC TV show That Was The Week That Was; the song was later included in Lehrer's album That Was The Year That Was. It was a satire on what some saw as von Braun's cavalier attitude toward the consequences of his work in Nazi Germany: "'Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? / That's not my department', says Wernher von Braun." Contrary to popular belief, Wernher von Braun did not sue Tom Lehrer for defamation, nor has Lehrer been forced to relinquish all of his royalty income to Von Braun. Lehrer firmly denied those claims in a 2003 interview.
The Last Days of Pompeii (1991): A rock opera by Grant Hart's post-Hüsker Dü alternative rock group Nova Mob, in which von Braun features as a character. The album includes a song called Wernher von Braun.
Progress vs. Pettiness (2005): A song about the Space Race written and performed by The Phenomenauts for their CD Re-Entry. The song begins: "In 1942 there was Wernher von Braun..."
Oh Carolina (aka Carolina) (1960): written by John Folkes and recorded by the Folkes Brothers and made famous by a cover from Haitian born singer Shaggy mentions Wernher von Braun without any context.
John D. Loudermilk's song He's Just A Scientist (That's All) contains the lyric "Everybody's flippin' over Fabian or Frankie Avalon, but nobody ever seems to give a flip over Dr Werner Von Braun."
The song "Apollo XI/V1/V2/Aggregat 4" from German Electro band deals with his inventions.
Blues metal artists Clutch make reference to von Braun in the 2009 song "Struck Down" on the album Strange Cousins From The West.
;Computer games
In the 1999 PC game System Shock 2, the main starship is named the Von Braun.
See also
Aggregate 1
German inventors and discoverers
List of coupled cousins
Robert H. Goddard
Sergey Korolyov
References
Bibliography
Notes
Further reading
External links
Dr. Wernher von Braun – At the Redstone Arsenal Historical Information pages
Wernher Von Braun – A Register of His Papers in the Library of Congress
- Photos of Wernher von Braun's gravesite
The capture of von Braun and his men – At the U.S. 44th Infantry Division website
Dark Side of the Moon: Wernher von Braun, the Third Reich, and the Space Race – review of biography
Wernher von Braun page – Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) History Office
"The Disney - von Braun Collaboration and its Influence on Space Exploration" – by Mike Wright, MSFC
Coat-of-arms of Dr. Wernher von Braun
Remembering Von Braun – by Anthony Young - The Space Review Monday, July 10, 2006
The Mittelbau-Dora Concentration Camp Memorial
"The old dreams, and the modern reality." Wernher von Braun interviewed by Jules Bergman circa 1969.
Article on von Braun, Huntsville, and German rocket scientists
Audio commentary by Wernher von Braun about Flight Captain Erich Warsitz (world’s first jet pilot), Museum of Transport - Switzerland, “Planetarium”, August 30, 1971
V2rocket.com
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![The Parus Business Centre (Ukrainian: Бізнес Центр «Парус») is a 34-story class-A[8] office building in Kiev (Kyiv), the capital of Ukraine. It is located at the very centre of the city, between Mechnikova St. and Lesi Ukrainky Blvd. (municipal address: 2, Mechnikova St.)[9] and is currently the highest building in the country.[10]](http://web.archive.org./web/20110918092816im_/http://cdn1.wn.com/pd/51/56/d19e06e70f1bb3723cbd2ff04570_grande.jpg "The Parus Business Centre (Ukrainian: Бізнес Центр «Парус») is a 34-story class-A[8] office building in Kiev (Kyiv), the capital of Ukraine. It is located at the very centre of the city, between Mechnikova St. and Lesi Ukrainky Blvd. (municipal address: 2, Mechnikova St.)[9] and is currently the highest building in the country.[10]")
![The Parus Business Centre (Ukrainian: Бізнес Центр «Парус») is a 34-story class-A[8] office building in Kiev (Kyiv), the capital of Ukraine. It is located at the very centre of the city, between Mechnikova St. and Lesi Ukrainky Blvd. (municipal address: 2, Mechnikova St.)[9] and is currently the highest building in the country.[10]](http://web.archive.org./web/20110918092816im_/http://cdn0.wn.com/pd/51/56/d19e06e70f1bb3723cbd2ff04570_thumb.jpg "The Parus Business Centre (Ukrainian: Бізнес Центр «Парус») is a 34-story class-A[8] office building in Kiev (Kyiv), the capital of Ukraine. It is located at the very centre of the city, between Mechnikova St. and Lesi Ukrainky Blvd. (municipal address: 2, Mechnikova St.)[9] and is currently the highest building in the country.[10]")
