Dr. Wernher von Braun
First Center Director, July 1, 1960 - Jan. 27, 1970
Wernher
von Braun (1912–1977) was one of the most important rocket
developers and champions of space exploration during the period
between the 1930s and the 1970s. As a youth he became enamored
with the possibilities of space exploration by reading the science
fiction of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells, and from the science fact
writings of Hermann Oberth, whose 1923 classic study, Die Rakete
zu den Planetenräumen (By Rocket to Space), prompted young
von Braun to master calculus and trigonometry so he could understand
the physics of rocketry. From his teenage years, von Braun had
held a keen interest in space flight, becoming involved in the
German rocket society, Verein fur Raumschiffarht (VfR), as early
as 1929. As a means of furthering his desire to build large and
capable rockets, in 1932 he went to work for the German army to
develop ballistic missiles. While engaged in this work, von Braun
received a Ph.D. in physics on July 27, 1934.
Von Braun is well known as the leader of what has been called
the “rocket team” which developed the V–2 ballistic
missile for the Nazis during World War II. The V–2s were
manufactured at a forced labor factory called Mittelwerk. Scholars
are still reassessing his role in these controversial activities.
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The
brainchild of von Braun’s rocket team operating at a secret
laboratory at Peenemünde on the Baltic coast, the V–2
rocket was the immediate antecedent of those used in space exploration
programs in the United States and the Soviet Union. A liquid propellant
missile extending some 46 feet in length and weighing 27,000 pounds,
the V-2 flew at speeds in excess of 3,500 miles per hour and delivered
a 2,200-pound warhead to a target 500 miles away. First flown
in October 1942, it was employed against targets in Europe beginning
in September 1944. By the beginning of 1945, it was obvious to
von Braun that Germany would not achieve victory against the Allies,
and he began planning for the postwar era.
Before the Allied capture of the V–2 rocket complex, von
Braun engineered the surrender of 500 of his top rocket scientists,
along with plans and test vehicles, to the Americans. For fifteen
years after World War II, von Braun worked with the U.S. Army
in the development of ballistic missiles. As part of a military
operation called Project Paperclip, he and his rocket team were
scooped up from defeated Germany and sent to America where they
were installed at Fort Bliss, Texas. There they worked on rockets
for the U.S. Army, launching them at White Sands Proving Ground,
New Mexico. In 1950 von Braun’s team moved to the Redstone
Arsenal near Huntsville, Ala., where they built the Army’s
Jupiter ballistic missile.
In 1960, his rocket development center transferred from the
Army to the newly established NASA and received a mandate to build
the giant Saturn rockets. Accordingly, von Braun became director
of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center and the chief architect
of the Saturn V launch vehicle, the superbooster that would propel
Americans to the Moon.
Von Braun also became one of the most prominent spokesmen of
space exploration in the United States during the 1950s. In 1970,
NASA leadership asked von Braun to move to Washington, D.C., to
head up the strategic planning effort for the agency. He left
his home in Huntsville, Ala., but in 1972 he decided
to retire from NASA and work for Fairchild Industries of Germantown,
Md. He died in Alexandria, Va., on June 16, 1977.