Wernher Magnus Maximilian Freiherr von Braun (23 March 1912 – 16 June 1977) was a German-born American aerospace engineer and space architect. He was the leading figure in the development of rocket technology in Nazi Germany and a pioneer of rocket and space technology in the United States.
While in his twenties and early thirties, von Braun worked in Nazi Germany's rocket development program. He helped design and co-developed the V-2 rocket at Peenemünde during World War II.
Following the war he was secretly moved to the United States, along with about 1,600 other German scientists, engineers, and technicians, as part of Operation Paperclip. He worked for the United States Army on an intermediate-range ballistic missile program, and he developed the rockets that launched the United States' first space satellite Explorer 1.
In 1960, his group was assimilated into NASA, where he served as director of the newly formed Marshall Space Flight Center and as the chief architect of the Saturn V super heavy-lift launch vehicle that propelled the Apollo spacecraft to the Moon. In 1967, von Braun was inducted into the National Academy of Engineering, and in 1975, he received the National Medal of Science. He advocated for a human mission to Mars.
For us boomer kids like me caught up in the post war excitement in America and realizing that for the first time we have a chance to start exploring Outer Space for real, and the future is now for us Boomers to be a apart of it.
There where no text books to read because the history was being written at the moment, and this three part series created by John Hopkins University was a great start, and a great campy look back as well.
Notes: Johns Hopkins Science Review: Man Will Conquer Space (Parts 1-3). October 6, 13 and 20, 1952. Live from WAAM in Baltimore, over the DuMont Network.
In part 3, Dr. Wernher von Braun, rocket expert, explains and demonstrates a three-stage rocket and its role in the construction of a three-story space station, which will be a launch pad for trips to the moon. He shows viewers both a prototype space station model and moon rocket model and an animated version of the workings of the two.
Other shows include part 1, Dr. John Strong describes the layers of the earth's atmosphere. Heinz Haber discusses the problems that humans must overcome to travel in space. They will need to surmount oxygen deprivation, depressurization, ultraviolet and cosmic radiation, and zero gravity and weightlessness. Protecting man from these elements must be solved before manned space travel can occur.
In part 2, Francis Clauser discusses how Newton's third law explains the propulsion of rocket ships. Speeds of over 25,000 miles per hour are needed to escape the earth's atmosphere and 16,000 miles per hour to put a rocket in orbit around the earth. Fuels that can be used to propel rockets include hydrazine and nitric acid. A model of a three stage rocket is shown to demonstrate how man will begin space travel.
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