Wernher Von Braun

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Wernher Magnus Maximilian Freiherr von Braun (March 23, 1912 – June 16, 1977) was a German and later American aerospace engineer and space architect.

Von Braun, the leading figure in Germany's rocket technology development and a pioneer of rocket and space technology, served in the United States in his twenties and early thirties.

During WWII, he was assisting in the design and production of the V-2 rocket at Peenemünde.

Following the war, he and about 1,600 other German scientists, engineers, and technicians were secretly moved to the United States as part of Operation Paperclip.

He served with the US Army on an intermediate-range ballistic missile program, and he commanded the rockets that launched the US' first space satellite Explorer 1. In 1960, his group was assimilated into NASA, where he served as both the head of the newly formed Marshall Space Flight Center and as the chief architect of the Saturn V super heavy-lift launch vehicle that carried the Apollo spacecraft to the Moon.

Von Braun was inducted into the National Academy of Engineering in 1967, and he was honoured with the National Medal of Science in 1975.

He called for a human mission to Mars.

Early life

Wernher von Braun was born in the small town of Wirsitz, Prussia's Province of Posen, then German Empire, and now Poland.

Magnus Freiherr von Braun (1878–1972), his father, a civil servant and centrist, served as Minister of Agriculture in the federal government during the Weimar Republic. Emmy von Quistorp (1886-1989), a descendant of medieval European royalty, traced her ancestry through both parents to medieval European royalty, and was a descendant of Edward III of England, Valdemar I of Denmark, Robert III of Scotland, and Edward III of England. Wernher had an older brother, the West German diplomat Sigismund von Braun, who served as Secretary of State in the 1970s, as well as a younger brother, Magnus von Braun, who was a rocket scientist and then a Chrysler executive.

In 1915, the family moved to Berlin, Brandenburg, Germany, where his father worked at the Ministry of the Interior. His mother gave him a telescope after Wernher's Confirmation, and he discovered a passion for astronomy. Von Braun began playing both the cello and piano at an early age and wanted to become a composer at one time. He learned from composer Paul Hindemith. Wernher's youthful compositions are reminiscent of Hindemith's style. Beethoven and Bach's piano pieces could be played from memory. Wernher began at Ettersburg Castle near Weimar, New York, where he did not do well in physics and mathematics. There, he acquired a copy of Die Rakete zu den Planetenräumen (1923, by Rocket Space pioneer Hermann Oberth). His parents moved him to the Hermann-Lietz-Internat (also a residential school) on the East Frisian North Sea island of Spiekeroog in 1928. Wernher had always been fascinated by space travel, but from then on, he devolved his attention to physics and mathematics to pursue his curiosity in rocket engineering.

During the late 1920s, Opel RAK's first large-scale experimental rocket program, as well as regional excitement as so-called "Rocket Rumble" and later spaceflight pioneers, particularly Wernher von Braun. Wernher, a 16-year-old man, was so excited about the public Opel RAK demonstrations that he built his own handmade rocket car, nearly killing himself in the process. Detonating the toy wagon to which he had attached fireworks, causing a major disruption in a packed street. He was taken into custody by the local police until his dad arrived to collect him. Fritz von Opel and the Opel RAK program were born in 1930, immigrating first to the United States and then to France and Switzerland after the Great Depression. Valier was killed after the break-up of the Opel-RAK program in mid-1930, and it is considered the first fatality of the dawning space age.

von Braun attended the Technische Hochschule Berlin in 1930, where he co-founded the Spaceflight Society (VfR), was co-founded by Valier, and collaborated with Willy Ley on his liquid-fueled rocket motor experiments in collaboration with others such as Rolf Engel, Rudolf Nebel, Hermann Oberth, or Paul Ehmayr. He obtained a diploma in mechanical engineering in spring 1932. His early exposure to rocketry compelled him to understand that space exploration would require much more than the latest engineering techniques. von Braun, who wanted to know more about physics, chemistry, and astronomy, joined the Friedrich-Wilhelm University of Berlin for doctoral studies and graduated with a doctorate in physics in 1934. He attended ETH Zürich from June to October 1931.

Personal life

Von Braun had a charismatic demeanor and was regarded as a ladies' man. He would often be seen in the evenings in the company of two girlfriends at once as a student in Berlin. 63 He had a string of events in Peenemünde's shadowy and computer pool.

: 92–94

Von Braun became engaged to Dorothee Brill, a Berlin physical education teacher, in January 1943, and he sought permission to marry from the SS Race and Settlement Main Office. Nevertheless, the marriage was called off due to his mother's inability. 146–147 He had an affair with a French woman while in Paris, and he was preparing V-2 launch sites in northeastern France. After the war, she was imprisoned for coordination and became destitute.

: 147–148

In a letter sent to his father, von Braun suggested marriage to Maria Luise von Quistorp, his maternal first cousin, during his stay in Fort Bliss. He married in a Lutheran church in Landshut, Bavaria, on March 1, 1947, after being allowed to return to Germany and return with his bride. He was 35 years old and his new bride, 18, was 18 years old. He converted to Evangelicalism just a few weeks after. He and his wife, father, and mother returned to Manhattan on March 26, 1947. Iris Careen, the von Brauns' first daughter together, was born at Fort Bliss Army Hospital on December 8, 1948. Margrit Cécile, born in 1952, and Peter Constantine, born in 1960, married in a second child.

Von Braun was a naturalized citizen of the United States on April 15, 1955.

Source

Career in Germany

Von Braun appeared at a lecture by Auguste Piccard in 1930. The young student approached the legendary explorer of high-altitude balloon flight and told him: "You know, I'm planning on going to the Moon at some point." Piccard is said to have responded with encouraging words.

Von Braun was greatly influenced by Oberth, of whom he spoke: 'He said, he was influenced by his brother.'

According to historian Norman Davies, von Braun was allowed to work as a rocket scientist in Germany thanks to a "curious oversight" in the Treaty of Versailles, which did not include rocketry in its list of weapons banned to Germany.

Von Braun had an ambivalent and complicated relationship with Nazi Germany. On November 12, 1937, he applied for membership in the Nazi Party and was given membership number 5,738,692.

Michael J. Neufeld, author of aerospace history and director of the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum, wrote that ten years after von Braun joined the Nazi Party, he signed an affidavit for the United States Army, but the wrong year: 1996.

It hasn't been determined if von Braun's year of service was intentional or a simple mistake.

: 96 Neufeld further wrote:

Von Braun's later reactions to the National Socialist government of the late 1930s and early 1940s was complicated. He said he had been so inspired by the early Nazi promise of removing from the post-World War II economic effects that his patriotic hopes had grown. He admitted that he "fared reasonably well under totalitarianism" at the time, according to a 1952 memoir essay. 96–97 But, he wrote that "to us, Hitler was still only a pompous fool with a Charlie Chaplin moustache" and that he mistook him for "another Napoleon" who was "completely without scruples, a godless man who mistook him for "the only one god."

Von Braun, a SS horseback riding school, began riding horses on November 1, 1933 as an SS-Anwärter. He died in the following year. 63 In 1940, von Braun joined the SS: 47, gaining the rank of Untersturmführer in the Allgemeine-SS and was issued membership number 185,068.

von Braun said he wore the SS uniform only for one time when viewed a snapshot of himself standing behind Himmler, but that he had worn the SS uniform to formal meetings in 2002. He began as a sous commandant (Second lieutenant) and was promoted three times by Himmler, the last time in June 1943 to SS-Sturmbannführer (Major). These were simply scientific awards that were distributed by mail each year, according to Von Braun.

When the Nazi Party took power in Germany's coalition government, von Braun was working on his creative doctorate; rocketry was almost immediately integrated into the national agenda. Walter Dornberger, an artillery captain, arranged an Ordnance Department study grant for von Braun, who then spent next to Dornberger's new solid-fuel rocket test site in Kummersdorf.

Von Braun's doctorate in physics (aerospace engineering) was awarded a doctorate in physics (aerospace engineering) at the University of Berlin on July 27, 1934, for a thesis titled "About Combustion Tests"; his doctoral supervisor was Erich Schumann. This was, on the other hand, only the academic part of von Braun's career. His complete dissertation, Building, Theoretical, and Experimental Solution to the Liquid Prohibition Rocket's Problem was not released until 1960, and was not released until 1960. His company had successfully launched two liquid fuel rockets by the end of 1934, with elevations of 2.2 and 3.5 km (2 mi).

At the time, Germany was particularly interested in American physicist Robert H. Goddard's work. Before 1939, German scientists occasionally contacted Goddard specifically with technical questions. Von Braun integrated Goddard's ideas from various journals and turned them into the fabrication of the Aggregat (A) series of rockets. On October 3, 1942, the first successful launch of an A-4 took place. The A-4 rocket will be known as the V-2. Von Braun reflected on rocketry's history and said of Goddard's work in 1963: "His rockets may have been rather crude by present-day standards, but they blazed the trail and incorporated many of the features used in our most modern rockets and space vehicles."

Goddard confirmed that his work had been used by von Braun in 1944, shortly before the Nazis launched V-2s at England. A V-2 crashed in Sweden and some portions 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 gained some pieces from them; Goddard is said to have identified parts of his creation and inferred that his brainchild had been turned into a weapon. Later in life, von Braun would say: "I have a deep and sincere regret for the victims of the V-2 rockets."

Von Braun said, "at no time in Germany did I or any of my associates ever see a Goddard patent." This was independently reported. He wrote that allegations concerning Goddard's work were the furthest from the truth, noting that Goddard's book "A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes," which was analyzed by von Braun and Oberth, lacked the specificity of liquid-fuel experimentation with rockets. Following the war against rocket development, it was also revealed that he was responsible for an estimated 20 patentable inventions related to rocketry as well as receiving US patents. He has also provided solutions to a variety of aerospace engineering issues in the 1950s and 1960s, according to documented accounts.

Adolf Hitler ordered the production of the A-4 as a "vengeance weapon" on December 22, 1942, and the Peenemünde group aimed for London. Hitler was so ecstatic that he made von Braun a professor shortly after Braun's 7 July 1943 presentation of an A-4 winning a color film.

By that time, British and Soviet intelligence services were aware of the rocket programme and von Braun's team in Peenemünde, which was based on the Polish underground Home Army's intelligence. RAF Bomber Command's Operation Hydra sent raids on the Peenemünde camp, which was made up of 596 aircraft, dropping 1,800 tons of explosives over the nights of 17-18 August 1943. The plant was salvaged and the majority of the engineering 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, coded "Retaliation/Vengeance Weapon 2") was launched in England on September 7, 1944, only 21 months after the project was officially announced. Mort Sahl, a Satirist, has been accused of defaming von Braun by claiming, "I aim at the stars, but then I hit London."

Von Braun's rocketry team in Kummersdorf investigated the possibility of building liquid-fueled rockets in aircraft during 1936. Ernst Heinkel enthusiastically supported their experiments, supplying a He-72 and later two He-112s for the experiments. Erich Warsitz was seconded by RLM to von Braun and Heinkel in 1936 because he had been lauded as one of the most experienced test pilots of the period, as well as having an exceptional fund of technical expertise. "Are you with us and will you test the rocket in the air?" Warsitz asked after he familiarized him with a test-stand run, showing him the appropriate equipment in the aircraft. You'll be a well-known man in Warsitz. And then, we'll fly to the Moon, with you at the helm.

": 35

One of these older aircraft was flown with its piston engine shut down during flight by Warsitz, but it was not pushed by von Braun's rocket power alone in June 1937. Despite a wheels-up landing and the fuselage being on fire, it was demonstrated in official circles that an aircraft could be flown safely with a back-thrust system through the rear.

: 51

Hellmuth Walter's experiments into hydrogen peroxide based rockets were leading to new light and simple rockets that were well suited for aircraft installation. Ariel peroxide and calcium permanganate were also used by RLM to produce a rocket engine for the He-112; thus, there were two distinct new rocket motor designs at Neuhardenberg: although 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 fire, while the Walter models used hot vapors from a chemical reaction, but both engines gave thrust and high speed. 41 The He-112's subsequent flights used the Walter-rocket rather than von Braun's; it was more reliable, quicker to operate, and safer for test pilot Warsitz.

: 55

SS General Hans Kammler, who as an engineer had built several concentration camps, including Auschwitz, had a reputation for brutality and invented the idea of using concentration camp prisoners as slave laborers in the rocket program. Arthur Rudolph, the chief engineer of the V-2 rocket factory in Peenemünde, supported this idea in April 1943 as a labor shortage was identified. More people were killed by the V-2 rockets than were killed by it as a weapon. Von Braun admitted to visiting Mittelwerk on several occasions and characterized the plant as "repulsive," but claimed never to have personally witnessed any deaths or beatings, though it was obvious to him by 1944 that deaths had occurred. He denied ever visiting the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp, where 20,000 people died from exhausting working conditions.

According to some prisoners, von Braun was involved in violent torture or approved of it. Guy Morand, a French resistance fighter who was a prisoner in Dora, testified in 1995 that von Braun ordered a prisoner to be flogged, after an apparent sabotage attempt, but Robert Cazabonne, another French prisoner, denied it as prisoners were hanged by cranes. 123–124 These accounts may have been mistaken identification, but it may have been a case of mistaken identity. Adam Cabala, a former Buchenwald prisoner, claims that von Braun rushed to the concentration camp to pick slave labourers:

Von Braun later said he was aware of the treatment of prisoners but felt powerless to change the situation.

Heinrich Himmler, a French historian and survivor of the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp, had von Braun visit his Feldkommandostelle Hochberg headquarters in East Prussia in February 1944. Himmler was plotting to obtain command of all German armament programs, including the V-2 program at Peenemünde in order to raise his power base within the Nazi regime. The V-2's tenacity was 38-38. He also recommended that von Braun collaborate more closely with Kammler to solve the V-2's engineering difficulties. Von Braun said that the difficulties were simply technical, and that he was positive that they would be solved with Dornberger's assistance.

Since October 1943, Von Braun had been under SD surveillance. According to a classified study, Klaus Riedel and Helmut Gröttrup were expected to have expressed regret at an engineer's house one evening in early March 1944 that they were not working on a spaceship and that the war was not going well; this was described as a "defeatist" attitude. A young female dentist who was an SS spy shared their remarks. These two men were arrested by the Gestapo on suspicion of false reports that von Braun and his coworkers were communist sympathizers and had attempted to sabotage the V-2 program, as well as Himmler's unlawful allegations that they were communist sympathizers and had attempted to destabilize the V-2 scheme.

: 38–40

Unsuspecting von Braun was arrested on March 14 (or 15 March), 1944, and was taken to a Gestapo cell in Stettin (now Szczecin, Poland). 38 – 40 years old, where he was detained for two weeks without knowing the charges against him.

Dornberger obtained von Braun's conditional release and Albert Speer, Reichsminister for Munitions and War Production, which would be impossible without von Braun's leadership, and it would be impossible without von Braun's leadership. Speer's memoirs states that Hitler has finally accepted that von Braun will be "safeted from all charges as long as he is necessary," although the situation's general consequences are uncertain.

Early 1945, von Braun assembled his planning staff and begged them to determine when and to whom they should go back. Von Braun and his employees decided to flee the Americans over a year of being unable to go to the Soviets. Kammler had ordered the transfer of his troops to central Germany, but an army chief's conflict led them to join the army and fight. Von Braun designed papers and carried 500 of his employees to Mittelwerk, where they resumed their employment in Bleicherode and neighboring towns after the middle of February 1945, dedeciding that Kammler's order was their best bet to defect to the Americans. Von Braun ordered that the blueprints be hidden in an abandoned iron mine near Goslar, out of fear of being destroyed by the SS. After lengthy interviews of von Braun, Walter Dornberger, Bernhard Tessmann, and Dieter Huzel, the US Counterintelligence Corps was able to find 14 tons of V-2 documents from the British Occupation Zone by May 15, 1945.

von Braun sustained a complicated fracture of his left arm and shoulder in a car accident when his driver fell asleep at the wheel while on a formal trip in March. His injuries were severe, but he insisted that his arm be set in a cast so he could leave the hospital. Due to his neglect of the injury, he had to be hospitalized once more a month later, when his bones had to be rebroken and realigned.

Early April, as the Allied forces advanced into Germany, Kammler ordered the engineering team, about 450 people, to be moved by rail into Oberammergau, Bavarian Alps, where they had been closely guarded by the SS with orders to execute the team if they were going to fall into enemy hands. However, von Braun was able to convince SS Major Kummer to order the dispersal of the militia into nearby villages, ensuring that they would not be a common target for US bombers. Oberammergau was captured by the Allied forces who had taken control of the majority of the engineering team on April 29, 1945.

Von Braun and several members of the engineering team, including Dornberger, made it to Austria. Magnus von Braun, an American civilian from the US 44th Infantry Division, was approached by the soldier on a bicycle, screaming out in broken English on May 2nd. The V-2 was invented by my brother. We want to leave." Wernher von Braun, a prisoner, spoke to the media after her abduction:

The American high command was well aware of how vital their catch was: von Braun had been at the top of the Black List, the code for the list of German scientists and engineers destined for immediate interrogation by US military experts. Major Robert B. Staver, Chief of the Research and Intelligence Branch of the United States Army Ordnance Corps in London, and Lieutenant Colonel R. L. Williams took von Braun and his department chiefs by Jeep from Garmisch to Nordhausen on June 9, 1945, two days before the official handover of the Nordhausen and Bleicherode area in Thuringia to the Soviets. A larger group of rocket engineers, including Helmut Gröttrup, was evacuated from Bleicherode, 40 miles (64 kilometers), southwest to Witzenhausen, a tiny town in the American Zone, in the following days.

Von Braun was briefly arrested at Kransberg Castle's "Dustbin" interrogation center, where the elite of Nazi Germany's political, academic, and technological sectors was briefed by US and British intelligence officials briefly. He was first sent to the United States as part of Operation Overcast, which was later known as Operation Paperclip. However, there are signs that British intelligence and scientists were the first to speak with him in depth, eager to obtain evidence that US officials would deny them. The team included the young L.S. Snell, the leading British rocket engineer, later chief engineer of Rolls-Royce Limited, and the Concorde's engine designer, was a retired engineer. Both from the Americans and the other allies, the British gleaned specific information that was still top-secret.

American career

However, one of his last acts in office, was announced on June 20, 1945, before US Secretary of State Edward Stettinius Jr. approved the removal of von Braun and his experts to the United States as one of his last acts in office; however, this was not announced to the public until October 1, 1945.

On September 20, 1945, the first seven technicians arrived in the United States at New Castle Army Air Field, just south of Wilmington, Delaware. They were then flown to Boston, Massachusetts, and transported by sea to the Army Intelligence Service Post in Fort Strong in Boston Harbor. With the exception of von Braun, the men were moved to Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland to sort out the Peenemünde papers, allowing the scientists to continue their rocketry experiments.

Finally, von Braun and his remaining Peenemünde troops (see a list of German rocket scientists in the United States) were relocated to Fort Bliss, a large Army installation just north of El Paso, Texas. Von Braun later reported that finding a "genuine emotional attachment" to his new environment was difficult. Walther Reidel, the nation's chief design engineer, was the subject of a December 1946 article "American Scientist Says American Cooking Tasteless; Dislikes Rubberized Chicken," which revealed the presence of von Braun's team in the region and angering Albert Einstein and John Dingell. Requests to upgrade their living conditions, such as laying linoleum over cracked wood flooring, were turned down. "We had been coddled here at Peenemünde, and here we were counting pennies." Whereas von Braun had thousands of engineers who came to him at Peenemünde, he was now subordinated to "pimply" 26-year-old Jim Hamill, an Army major with only an undergraduate degree in engineering. Although his faithful Germans still identified him as "Herr Professor," Hamill referred to him as "Wernher" and never replied to von Braun's request for more information. Every attempt at new rocket designs was turned down.

They prepared military, industrial, and academic staff in the intricacies of rockets and guided missiles while at Fort Bliss. They assisted with the construction, assembly, and delivery of a number of V-2s delivered from Allied-controlled Germany to the White Sands Proving Ground in New Mexico as part of the Hermes program. They also continued to investigate the future of rockets for military and research uses. Since they were not allowed to evacuate Fort Bliss without military assistance, von Braun and his coworkers began to talk about themselves only as "PoPs" – "Prisoners of Peace."

von Braun and his crew were moved from Huntsville, Alabama, where they lived for the next 20 years. von Braun was the Army's rocket development team at Redstone Arsenal from 1952 to 1956, resulting in the Redstone rocket, which was used for the first live nuclear ballistic missile tests conducted by the US. He was there for this historic launch and detonation. The Redstone rocket's first high-precision inertial navigation system was developed as a result of its work.

von Braun, the Army Ballistic Missile Agency's Development Division's chief, and his staff later developed the Jupiter-C, a modified Redstone rocket. The Jupiter-C was the base for the Juno I rocket that successfully launched the West's first satellite, Explorer 1, on January 31, 1958. The launch of America's space program was commemorated this festival.

Von Braun, who had been designing military rocket development in the real world, continued to entertain his engineer-scientist's aspiration to space exploration. However, he was no longer in danger of being fired as American public opinion of Germans began to recover, von Braun found himself increasingly in a position to promote his ideas. The Huntsville Times' headline ("Dr. von Braun says that astronomical flights are a possibility to Moon") may have sparked these attempts in 1950. Von Braun's theories reflected a societal wave spawned by science fiction movies and books.

In 1952, von Braun introduced the concept of a crewed space station in a Collier's Weekly magazine series of essays titled "Man Will Conquer Space Soon." The space artist Chesley Bonestell illustrated these articles and were influential in spreading his word. Often, von Braun collaborated with fellow German-born space advocate and science writer Willy Ley to publish his ideas, which, paradoxically, were heavy on the engineering front and predicted many technological aspects of space flight that never became reality.

The space station (which will be built using rockets with recoverable and reusable ascent stages) will be a toroid structure with a diameter of 250 feet (76 meters); it was designed as a rotating wheel-shaped station introduced in 1929 by Herman Potonik in his book The Problem of Space Travel – The Rocket Motor. To provide artificial gravity, the space station would spin around a central docking nave, and it will be assembled in a 1,075-kilometer (1,730 km) two-hour, high-inclination Earth orbit, allowing observance of virtually every location on Earth on a daily basis. The ultimate aim of the space station will be to provide a platform for crewed lunar expeditions. The 2001 film version of A Space Odyssey will heavily rely on the concept of a space station's visualization.

These expeditions were intended as large undertakings, with two for crews and one for cargo), each 49 m (108.27 ft) long and 33 m (108.27 ft) in diameter and driven by a rectangular grid of 30 rocket propulsion engines. After landing, astronauts will establish a permanent lunar base in the Sinus Roris region by using their craft's empty cargo holds as shelters, and they will explore their surroundings for eight weeks. This will include a 400 km (249 mi) trek in pressurized rovers to the crater Harpalus and the Mare Imbrium foothills.

Von Braun also created preliminary plans for a human mission to Mars that used the space station as a staging point at this moment. He had envisaged a fleet of 10 spacecraft (each with a mass of 3,720 metric tonnes), three of whom were uncrewed and each carrying one 200-tonne winged lander in lieu of cargo, and nine crew vehicles carrying a total of 70 astronauts. The mission's engineering and astronautic parameters were meticulously calculated. A subsequent venture was much more modest, with only one solely orbital container ship and one crewed craft. In both cases, the expedition will fly to Mars and back to Earth on a minimum-energy Hohmann transfer orbit.

Von Braun had written a science fiction book on the topic before officially formally expressing his views on human spaceflight to Mars. However, no fewer than 18 publishers had rejected the manuscript. Von Braun's Mars project popularizations were shown in magazines later this year. Project Mars: A Technical Tale, a complete manuscript, did not appear as a published book until December 2006.

Von Braun began working with Walt Disney and the Disney studios as a technical producer, initially for three television films about space exploration in the hopes that its involvement would bring greater public interest in the future of the space program. Man in Space, the first space broadcast dedicated to space exploration, debuted on television on March 9, 1955, attracting 40 million viewers.

Von Braun's revised idea of the first crewed lunar landing was published in 1959, condensed from episodes that had appeared in This Week Magazine before. Only one and very small spacecraft was involved in the mission, a winged lander with only two experienced pilots who had already circumnavigated the Moon on a previous mission. A rocket system with five distinct stages, loosely based on the Nova plans that were under discussion at the time, based on the Nova designs. Following 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 stage triggering an acceleration of 8–9 times normal gravity. In the third stage of deceleration, which is forecast to begin just a few hundred kilometers above the landing site in a crater near the lunar north pole, a reservable propellant would be used. The fourth stage brought acceleration to lunar escape velocity, while the fifth stage would be responsible for a deceleration that allowed for the spacecraft's aerocapture of the spacecraft ending in a runway landing, much like the Space Shuttle. Engineer von Braun predicted a medical condition that would be apparent only years later: being a veteran explorer with no history of severe adverse reactions to weightlessness is no cover against becoming suddenly and painfully spacesick.

Von Braun, a nonpracticing, "perfunctory" Lutheran, whose membership was nonexistent and not taken seriously in the first half of his life. "Veryng Stuhler and Frederick I. Ordway III said, "von Braun did not show signs of religious devotion, nor even an interest in subjects relating to the church or biblical teachings." In fact, he was regarded as a "merry heathen" by his neighbors (fröhlicher Heide). However, he referred to the Western Allies rather than the Russians in 1945, as being inspired by a desire to communicate rocket technology with people who followed the Bible. In 1946,: 469, he attended El Paso, Texas, and underwent a evangelical conversion. He wrote: "In an unidentified religious journal," he said.

Michael J. Neufeld is of the belief that he converted to religion "to calm his own conscience," according to University of Southampton scholar Kendrick Oliver, who said that von Braun was reportedly led to a new direction in his life after the moral turbulence of his Third Reich service. "Maybe he had one bad deal with the Devil," he now felt the desire to have God firmly on his side."

W. Albert Wilson, a former pilot and NASA employee, admitted that he had spoken with von Braun about the Christian faith while von Braun was at NASA in 2004, and that the discussion was instrumental in von Braun's conversion.

He became more religious as he entered an Episcopal church later in life. He spoke and wrote about the complementarity of science and faith, the soul's afterlife, and his faith in God. "Through science man seeks to know more about the creation mysteries." He is interested in the Creator by faith. "The farther we probe into space, the greater my faith," he was interviewed by Assemblies of God pastor C. M. Ward. In addition, he worked privately with evangelist Billy Graham and civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.

During the Cold War, Von Braun conceived and published his space station design, when the US government placed the Soviet Union's containment above everything else. The fact that his space station – if equipped with missiles that could be easily modified from those that were not already available at this time – gives the US space supremacy in both orbital and ground warfare. Von Braun went into detail about them in several of his books and journals, but he took pain to say that such military tasks are "particularly dreadful." Michael J. Neufeld of the National Air and Space Museum in Washington has written about this much-less memorable element of von Braun's "push for space" from the ground.

The United States Navy had been tasked with creating a rocket to lift satellites into orbit, but the new Vanguard rocket launch system was unreliable. With the introduction of Sputnik 1, a belief in the United States that it lagged behind the Soviet Union in the emerging Space Race grew within the US. Von Braun and his German team's missile experience was used to build an orbital launch vehicle, which was then used by American officials to build an orbital launch vehicle. Von Braun had first suggested such a scheme in 1954, but it was turned down at the time.

NASA was established by law on July 29, 1958. The 50th Redstone rocket was successfully launched from Johnston Atoll in the south Pacific as part of Operation Hardtack I. NASA opened the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, two years ago, and the Army Ballistic Missile Agency (ABMA) design team led by von Braun was transferred to NASA. Von Braun made it clear that if Saturn's production was allowed to continue, he would return to NASA only if it were to continue. Von Braun became the center's first director on July 1st 1960 and served until January 27th, 1970.

Von Braun's early years at NASA included a failed "four-inch flight" in which the first uncrewed Mercury-Redstone rocket only increased a few inches before settling back onto the launch pad. The launch failure was later determined to be the result of a "power plug one prong shorter than the other" because a worker demanded it to make it fit." The difference in the length of one prong was apparent in the power disconnection as a "cut-off signal to the engine," the launch system detected the difference in the power disconnection as a "cut-off signal to the engine." The system was suspended before the launch, and Project Mercury's "nadir of morale" was set.

Von Braun argued that after a series of failures on Mercury-Redstone 2 in January 1961, he continued on one more test before the Redstone could be classified man-rated. His overly cautious approach caused clashes with other participants in the program who said that the MR-2's scientific problems were straightforward and that they had been resolved shortly after the flight. He overruled them, so a demonstration mission involving a Redstone on a boilerplate capsule was carried out successfully in March. Von Braun's tenacity was blamed for the inability of the US to launch a crewed space mission before the Soviet Union, which culminated in the first man in space the following month. Alan Shepard was successfully launched into space by von Braun's crew three weeks later on May 5th. He named his Mercury-Redstone 3 Freedom 7.

The Marshall Center's first big program was the development of Saturn rockets capable of carrying heavy payloads into and out of Earth orbit. The Apollo program for crewed Moon flights started from this. Von Braun pushed for a flight engineering design that called for an Earth orbit rendezvous system (the reason he had argued for building his space station), but in 1962, he converted to the lunar orbit rendezvous scheme, which was later realized. Kurt H. Debus, the first director of the Kennedy Space Center, spent a lot of time aboard Apollo on Apollo. On July 16, 1969, when a Marshall-built Saturn V rocket carried the crew of Apollo 11 on its historic eight-day mission, his desire to assist mankind set foot on the Moon became a reality. Saturn V rockets have helped six teams of astronauts reach the Moon's surface over the course of the mission.

Von Braun was instrumental in the establishment of the US Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville in the late 1960s. The desk from which he supervised America's entry into the space race is on display here. He was also instrumental in the creation of the experimental Applications Technology Satellite. He went to India and hoped that the initiative would be able to assist the country's poorest citizens.

Von Braun and several other top NASA executives under the guidance of his local summer of 1966–67, a field trip to Antarctica was organized for him and several others. The aim of the field trip was to determine if the experiences gained by the US scientific and technological community during the exploration of Antarctic wastelands would be useful to the crewed exploration of space. Von Braun was mainly interested in the scientific development of Antarctic research stations, logistics, habitation, and life support, as well as the use of the rocky Antarctic terrain to see signs of life on Mars and other planets.

Von Braun's internal memo dated 16 January 1969, he told his workers that he would remain as a center director at Huntsville but not to head the Apollo Applications Program. "I certainly prayed a lot before and during the critical Apollo flights," he described this period in his life as a time when he felt the greatest desire to pray. A few months after, on the occasion of the first Moon landing, he expressed his hope that the Saturn V carrier system would continue to be developed, encouraging human missions to Mars in the 1980s.

Nevertheless, von Braun and his family immigrated to Washington, D.C., where he was given the position of NASA's Deputy Associate Administrator for Planning at NASA Headquarters on March 1, 1970. Von Braun resigned from NASA on May 26, 1972, following a string of failures related to the Apollo program's demise and severe budget constraints. Not only had it become clear that NASA and his future space flight missions were incompatible by this time, but it was also more frustrating for him to see widespread support for a continuing presence of a man in space had waned dramatically once the aim of landing the Moon had been met.

Von Braun also suggested that a Space Camp would educate children in science and space technologies, as well as aiding their mental growth in the same way that athletic camps are aimed at improving physical fitness.

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Von Braun left NASA and moved to Washington, D.C., where he became Vice President of Engineering and Development at Fairchild Industries in Germantown, Montgomery County, Maryland, on July 1, 1972.

Von Braun was diagnosed with kidney cancer in 1973 during a routine physical examination, but it could not be controlled with the medical techniques at the time.

In 1975, Von Braun founded and sponsored the National Space Institute, a precursor to the current National Space Society, and became the country's first president and chairman. He served as a scientific advisor to Lutz Kayser, the CEO of OTRAG, and a director of the Daimler-Benz board of directors in 1976. However, Fairchild's declining health led him to his resignation on December 31, 1976. He was hospitalized and unable to attend the White House ceremony when the 1975 National Medal of Science was given to him in early 1977.

Summary of SS career

(left SS after graduating from the college; with a date that dates back to 1934, the school was hired in 1940.)

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