The son of a German nobleman and his wife, an amateur astronomer, von Braun was fascinated early on with astronomy and the idea of interplanetary travel. Upon graduating from high school, von Braun joined the Verein für Raumschiffahrt (Society for Space Travel), a group of talented amateur scientists who built several experimental rockets that achieved heights of up to a mile (1.6 km).

When Adolf Hitler came to power in the early 1930s, the German military took control of the group and banned further private research in rocket technology. In 1932 von Braun became a civilian employee of the German army while he worked on his doctorate in physics from the University of Berlin, which he earned in 1934. Although he dreamed of using rockets for space exploration, von Braun worked with indefatigable energy throughout World War II at Peenemünde, an army research center on the Baltic...