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von Braun, Wernher

German-American Rocket Expert 1912-1977

Born in Wirsitz, Germany, on March 23, 1912, Wernher von Braun progressed from a student who failed mathematics and physics while spending too much time building his car to the world's foremost rocket engineer.

Inspired by Hermann Oberth's Rocket into Planetary Space (1923) and a telescope from his mother, von Braun decided to become a space pioneer by designing rockets and realized that he would need mathematics to succeed. He joined a German rocket society whose work had drawn the attention of the German army. In 1932 von Braun went to work for the ordnance department, designing ballistic missiles. During that period he earned a doctorate in physics, at the age of twenty-two, from the University of Berlin.

By 1941 von Braun had designed the A-4, followed by the V-2, which was used in World War II. When he learned that his rockets were being used to kill so many people, he said it was the darkest hour of his life. At one time he was jailed for spending time exploring spaceflight, taking time away from his military rocket building. He was released after two weeks because Germany needed his leadership for its missile program. In 1945 von Braun and 500 people on his team at Peenemunde surrendered to the Americans, bringing plans and test vehicles with them. He and 116 members of the team were brought to the United States to work on the American rocket program.

At White Sands Proving Ground in New Mexico and later at Huntsville, Alabama, von Braun's team developed the Redstone Rocket, which was twice the size of the V-2, and the Jupiter-C, which was modified into the Juno 1 and used to launch the American answer to Sputnik, the Explorer 1 spacecraft. The Redstone rocket later was used to launch Alan Shepard, the first American in space, on his suborbital flight. When the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) was established in 1958, von Braun became the director of the Huntsville installation, now named the Marshall Space Flight Center.

When the Soviet Union shocked the world with the launch of Yuri Gagarin three weeks before Shepard's flight, President John F. Kennedy consulted with von Braun to find a goal to which the United States could beat the Soviet Union. Von Braun told him that he thought the United States could land a man on the Moon and return him to Earth by 1967 or 1968. Once President Kennedy issued his challenge to get to the Moon "within the decade," von Braun was named to develop the Saturn rocket to achieve that purpose. The Saturn V rocket has the distinction of having launched all the American Moon missions as well as the Skylab space station without a single failure.

Von Braun retired from his post as deputy associate administrator at NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C., in 1972. In 1975 he founded and became president of the National Space Institute, which was intended to promote better understanding of space exploration among the public. Shortly before von Braun died on June 15, 1977, he was awarded the National Medal of Science by President Gerald Ford.