Wernher Magnus Maximilian Von Braun

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1912-1977

German-American Rocket Engineer

Wernher von Braun developed the world's first guided missiles for the German military during World War II. After the war, his rockets were used to launch America's first space probes, and he supervised the development of the Saturn rockets that took astronauts to the Moon during the Apollo era.

Von Braun was born on March 23, 1912, in Wirsitz, Germany (now Wyrzysk, Poland), into a wealthy family. His boyhood interest in astronomy was encouraged by his mother, and he built an observatory at the boarding school he attended. He did not, however, do particularly well in his physics and mathematics classes, until frustration in trying to understand a book by the rocketry pioneer Hermann Oberth (1894-1989) motivated him to apply himself. In 1930 he began attending the Berlin Institute of Technology, where he joined the German Society for Space Travel and assisted Oberth in his liquid-fueled rocket experiments. He obtained his bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering in 1932.

During his studies for his Ph.D. in physics, which he received in 1934 from the University of Berlin, von Braun continued his rocket research with a grant from the German Ordnance Department. He then took a job with the department and soon launched two liquid-fueled rockets to altitudes of about 2 miles (3.2 km). Over the next three years he established a team of about 80 people working on a guided rocket that could carry a 100-lb (45 kg) payload to an altitude of 15 miles (24 km), and experimenting with a rocket-driven fighter plane. This team formed the core of the famous German rocket stronghold at Peenemunde, and von Braun became its director.

Wernher von Braun. (The Library of Congress. Reproduced with permission).

During World War II the Peenemunde rocket production site supplied the Nazis with the world's first guided ballistic missile, the V-2 (vergeltungswaffen or vengeance weapon), and the first guided anti-aircraft missile, called the Wasserfall. The V-2 was used with devastating effect on the cities of Allied nations. Von Braun later said that patriotism and the pursuit of scientific research outweighed moral issues in his involvement with the German military.

After the Nazis were defeated, von Braun and 116 other German rocket engineers surrendered to the United States Army and were promptly employed by its Ordnance Department. At first, stationed at White Sands, New Mexico, all they had to work with was captured V-2 rockets. During the early 1950s they devel oped the Redstone ballistic missile and a longer-range four-stage missile called the Jupiter at the Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama. Von Braun became a U.S. citizen in 1955.

When the Russians launched the world's first artificial satellite, Sputnik, in 1957, the resulting space race between the superpowers changed the focus of von Braun's work. The first satellite launched by the United States, the Explorer 1, was placed into orbit using a modified Redstone rocket in January 1958. It was followed the next yearby America's first interplanetary probe, Pioneer IV, launched with a Jupiter rocket and proceeding to an orbit around the Sun. Von Braun's team was transferred to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in 1960. The rocket facilities at the Redstone Arsenal became the nucleus of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, and von Braun was appointed the center's director. Marshall Space Flight Center's main task during the 1960s was to develop the huge Saturn launch vehicles for the Apollo program.

Von Braun wrote a number of popular books on space exploration, including Across the Space Frontier (1952), Conquest of the Moon (1953), The Exploration of Mars (1956), First Men to the Moon (1960), History of Rocketry and Space Travel (1969), and Moon (1970). He led Marshall Space Flight Center until 1970, when he was appointed deputy associate administrator for planning at NASA Headquarters. He resigned from NASA two years later to accept an executive position with the aerospace contractor Fairchild Industries. In 1975 he founded the National Space Institute, an organization dedicated to promoting space exploration. He died in Alexandria, Virginia, on June 16, 1977.