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	Von Braun, Wernher The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia

Wernher von Braun (1912-1977) is the person most often credited for the development of the modern rocket, having directed the development of the giant Saturn V rocket that was used to transport humans to the Moon in 1969. Von Braun orchestrated the development of America's launch vehicles in the 1950s and 1960s and served as the first director of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center from 1960 to 1970.

Wernher von Braun was born on March 23, 1912, in Wirsitz, Germany. Like Oberth, von Braun became enamored with the possibilities of space exploration during his childhood by reading science fiction stories by Jules Verne and H.G. Wells. However, it was the technical writings of Hermann Oberth that prompted young von Braun to excel academically (particularly in physics and mathematics, graduating at the top of his high school class) so he could understand the physics of rocketry.

NASA

The Saturn V rocket taking the Apollo astronauts to the moon.

In 1929 a popular writer on space and rocketry in Germany named Willy Ley introduced von Braun to Professor Oberth. At that time, Oberth was working to show that liquid propellants were superior to solid propellants for space vehicle propulsion. Even though von Braun worked full time as a mechanic's apprentice in a Berlin factory, he spent his spare time joining four other members of the German Society for Space Travel as Professor Oberth's assistants, conducting tests with gasoline/liquid-oxygen rocket motors. Within a year, the group had developed a gasoline/liquid-oxygen burning rocket engine capable of producing a thrust of 70 newtons (15 pounds force) for over a minute. An official from the Chemical and Technical Institute, the German equivalent of the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), certified the demonstration, and thus the liquid-fueled rocket motor became recognized for the first time in Germany as an internal-combustion engine. This success was short-lived as Professor Oberth was forced to return to teaching and the Society was left without leadership or financial backing. Von Braun and the others in the society scrambled for two years to develop small chemical rockets and to perform demonstrations to fund further engine development.

In the spring of 1932, von Braun graduated from the Berlin Institute of Technology with a bachelor's degree in aeronautical engineering. Like his future Russian counterpart, Sergei Pavlovich Korolev (1906-1966), who directed Russia's lunar exploration program until his death, von Braun developed a love for flying and received his glider and airplane pilot’s licenses in 1932 and 1933, respectively. While von Braun enjoyed flying, his true passion was space exploration. To further his desire to build space vehicles, in 1932 von Braun went to work for the German army to develop ballistic missiles. His exposure to rocketry with the German Society for Space Travel convinced him that space exploration would require far more capable rockets than current engineering technology could provide. Wanting to learn more about physics and chemistry to further the development of rocket technology, von Braun entered the University of Berlin for graduate study in 1932 and chose to write his Ph.D. dissertation on liquid-propellant rocket propulsion.

	Discussion
	The history of rocketry has been driven by the need for technological advancements in military applications.

Von Braun was interested in studying problems associated with scaling up to much larger vehicles the small liquid chemical rockets he and his colleagues at the German Society for Space Travel had built and tested. Specifically, von Braun was interested in studying the injection, atomization, combustion and expansion of propellant in large rocket engines. As this work was to be both costly and dangerous, it was not clear how this topic could be tackled as a Ph.D. dissertation. Fortunately, the German army ordinance corps issued a research grant to sponsor von Braun's dissertation and permitted him to conduct his experiments at the Kummersdorf Army Proving Ground near Berlin. Von Braun became a civilian employee of the German army immediately after graduating with a Ph.D. in physics in 1934.

The V-2: The world's first modern rocket
In the early 1930s, the German military was in search of weapons that could defend Germany but not violate the Versailles treaty of World War I. Artillery captain Walter Dornberger was assigned to investigate the feasibility of using rockets for warfare. Dornberger went to see the German Society for Space Travel. He was impressed by their enthusiasm and gave them the equivalent of $400 US to build a rocket. While the rocket was ultimately a failure, Dornberger was quite impressed with von Braun and hired him to lead the German military's rocket artillery unit.

NASA

The A-4, later called the V-2, was a single-stage rocket fueled by alcohol and liquid oxygen. It stood 46 feet high, weighed 27,000 pounds at launch, and had a thrust of 56,000 pounds. The V-2 had a 500 mile-range with a payload capacity of 2,200 pounds, and could reach a velocity of 3,500 miles per hour (more than five times the speed of sound). On 3 October 1942 the V-2 was first launched from Peenemünde. Reaching an altitude of 60 miles, the V-2 was the world's first ballistic missile and the first rocket ever to go into the fringes of space. Some 6,500 rockets with more than 3,000 firings were made in less than three years between 1942 and 1945.

NASA

In this image slideshow, learn more about von Braun and the German rocket team.

By 1934 von Braun and Dornberger were directing a team of 80 specialists in Kummersdorf (near Berlin) to build rockets. That year, von Braun was awarded grants to develop a rocket to help heavy bombers take off (later becoming known as Jet-Assisted Take-Off [JATO]) and for a rocket-propelled, high-speed fighter. Kummersdorf proved to be too small for these projects, and so a new facility was built at Peenemünde on the Baltic coast. Peenemünde's desolate location meant that rockets could be test flown for 200 miles without risking people or property.

Through the early 1940s, von Braun and (now General) Dornberger developed a series of successively larger rockets, ultimately arriving at the A-4. In 1943, Hitler ordered that the A-4 be used as a "weapon of vengeance." The A-4 was later dubbed the V-2 for "Vergeltungswaffen-2" (Vengeance Weapon 2). The first military strike of the V-2 against western Europe was on September 7, 1944. Von Braun later remarked to his colleagues, "The rocket worked perfectly except for landing on the wrong planet."

NASA

The Mercury Redstone, the first large missile of the US Army.

By 1945 von Braun realized that Germany could not win the war and secretly made plans for a postwar era with the Allies. Von Braun assembled his closest colleagues to decide how and to whom they should surrender. Most of the engineers were afraid of the Russians, wary of the French, and did not believe the British had the money for a rocket program, thus leaving the Americans. After stealing a train with forged papers, von Braun led 500 of his top engineers and specialists away from Peenemünde (which at the time was occupied by the Russian army) through war-torn Germany to surrender to the Americans. Meanwhile, the German SS issued orders to kill von Braun and his engineers upon sight. After avoiding detection by the German army, von Braun's team happened on an American army private and promptly surrendered to the US Army near Reutte, Austria, in April 1945. Realizing the importance of these engineers, the Americans immediately went to Peenemünde and another facility at Nordhausen, capturing all remaining V-2s and V-2 parts and then destroying both facilities with high explosives. The Americans brought over 300 train carloads of spare V-2 parts to the United States. However, much of von Braun's production team was captured by the Russians.

NASA

In this image slideshow, learn more about the German V-2 rocket that von Braun designed.

After careful screening, 127 "von Braun Germans" were sent to the United States in November 1945. As a paperclip was placed in each of their file folders, the von Braun Germans became part of the program known as Operation Paperclip. Initially, the von Braun Germans were stationed at Fort Bliss in Texas but approximately 20 of them were soon posted at White Sands Proving Ground in New Mexico. By 1950 von Braun and most of his German colleagues (a few of the original group were returned to White Sands) arrived in Huntsville, Alabama, to create the technical backbone for the Army Ballistic Missile Agency. The team improved the V-2's technology and developed the US Army's first large missile, the Redstone, and the first US intermediate ballistic missile, the Jupiter. The Jupiter-C rocket would launch America's first artificial satellite, Explorer 1, into orbit in 1958. Von Braun became a bit of a celebrity as one of the most prominent spokespersons on space exploration in the United States during the 1950s. He even starred in a Disney short feature about the future of space travel.

In 1960 von Braun's rocket development activities moved from the jurisdiction of the army to that of the newly established National Aeronautics and Space Agency (NASA). He soon was directed to oversee the construction of the giant Saturn rocket for the US Moon landing campaign. Von Braun became the director of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center and the chief architect of the Saturn V rocket booster that first sent Americans to the lunar surface in 1969. In 1970 he moved to Washington, DC, to direct NASA's strategic planning effort. Von Braun retired from NASA in 1972 and went to work for Fairchild Industries in Germantown, Maryland. He died in Alexandria, Virginia, on June 16, 1977. The design of all modern rocket motors, including the Space Shuttle Main Engine, has its roots in the German V-2 rocket that von Braun designed.