Wernher von Braun
1912 – 1977 German-American rocket engineer, SS officer, NASA director
The rocket engineer who built Hitler's V-2 missile with slave labor and, after Operation Paperclip, the Saturn V that carried Americans to the Moon.
- Religion
- Later a professed evangelical Christian; earlier a member of the Nazi party and the SS.
- Affiliations
- Nazi Germany's V-2 program at Peenemunde; later NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center.
Wernher von Braun led the development of the V-2, the first ballistic missile, built at the Mittelwerk using concentration-camp labor. Brought to the United States under Operation Paperclip, he became the public face of the American space program and directed the building of the Saturn V rocket that launched the Apollo Moon landings. His career is the starkest example of the moral bargain at the root of the space age.
Connections
- influenced Konstantin Tsiolkovsky — A founding theorist whose rocket equation underlay all later rocketry.
- influenced Robert Goddard — His liquid-fuel rocket work laid groundwork von Braun's teams built upon.
In the timeline
- 1923 Oberth's The Rocket into Interplanetary Space mentioned
- 1927 Founding of the German rocket society mentioned
- 1937 Peenemuende rocket center established mentioned
- 1944 Von Braun's V-2, the first ballistic missile mentioned
- 1945 Operation Paperclip begins mentioned
- 1945 Von Braun surrenders to American forces mentioned