He was the second of three sons of a noble Lutheran family. From birth he held the title of Freiherr (equivalent to Baron). The German nobility's legal privileges were abolished in 1919, although noble titles could still be used as part of the family name.[citation needed]
He could play piano pieces of Beethoven and Bach from memory. Beginning in 1925, Wernher attended a boarding school at Ettersburg Castle near Weimar, where he did not do well in physics and mathematics. There he acquired a copy of Die Rakete zu den Planetenräumen (1923, By Rocket into Planetary Space)<ref>''Die Rakete zu den Planetenräumen'' by [[Hermann Oberth]], R. Oldenbourg 1923 {{OCLC|6026491}}{{failed verification|date=May 2020|reason=Source say nothing about von Braun}}</ref><nowiki> by rocket pioneer [[Hermann Oberth]]. In 1928, his parents moved him to the Hermann-Lietz-Internat (also a residential school) on the [[East Frisia]]n [[North Sea]] island of [[Spiekeroog]]. Space travel had always fascinated Wernher, and from then on he applied himself to [[physics]] and mathematics to pursue his interest in rocket engineering.
...and causing a major disruption in a crowded street by detonating the toy wagon to which he had attached fireworks. He was taken into custody by the local police until his father came to get him. The [[Great Depression]] put an end to the Opel RAK program and Fritz von Opel left Germany in 1930, emigrating first to the US, later to France and Switzerland. After the break-up of Opel-RAK program, Valier eventually was killed while experimenting with liquid-fueled rockets as means of propulsion in mid-1930, and is considered the first fatality of the dawning space age.
Although he worked mainly on military rockets in his later years there, space travel remained his primary interest.
==Career in Germany==
====Membership in the Allgemeine-SS====
Von Braun joined the SS horseback riding school on 1 November 1933 as an ''SS-[[Anwärter]]''. He left the following year.{{citation needed |date=July 2019}}{{rp|63}}...and was given the rank of [[Untersturmführer]] in the [[Allgemeine-SS]] and issued membership number 185,068.{{citation needed |date=July 2019}}{{rp|121}} In 1947, he gave the U.S. War Department this explanation:{{fact|date=November 2021}}
{{quote|In spring 1940, one SS-Standartenführer (SS-Colonel) Müller from Greifswald, a bigger town in the vicinity of Peenemünde, looked me up in my office ... and told me that [[Reichsführer-SS]] [[Himmler]] had sent him with the order to urge me to join the SS. I told him I was so busy with my rocket work that I had no time to spare for any political activity. He then told me, that ... the SS would cost me no time at all. I would be awarded the rank of a[n] "Untersturmfuehrer" (lieutenant) and it were {{sic}} a very definite desire of Himmler that I attend his invitation to join.
I asked Müller to give me some time for reflection. He agreed.
Realizing that the matter was of highly political significance for the relation between the SS and the Army, I called immediately on my military superior, Dr. Dornberger. He informed me that the SS had for a long time been trying to get their "finger in the pie" of the rocket work. I asked him what to do. He replied on the spot that if I wanted to continue our mutual work, I had no alternative but to join.{{fact|date=November 2021}}}}
===Work under Nazi regime===
[[File:Bundesarchiv Bild 146-1978-Anh.024-03, Peenemünde, Dornberger, Olbricht, Brandt, v. Braun.jpg|thumb|First rank, from left to right, General Dr [[Walter Dornberger]] (partially hidden), General [[Friedrich Olbricht]] (with Knight's Cross), Major Heinz Brandt, and Wernher von Braun (in civilian dress) at [[Peenemünde]], in March 1941]]
In 1933, von Braun was working on his creative doctorate when the [[Nazi Party]] came to power in a coalition government in Germany; rocketry was almost immediately moved onto the national agenda. An artillery captain, [[Walter Dornberger]], arranged an [[Military logistics|Ordnance]] Department research grant for von Braun, who then worked next to Dornberger's existing solid-fuel rocket test site at [[Kummersdorf]].{{fact|date=November 2021}}
By the end of 1934, his group had successfully launched two liquid fuel rockets that rose to heights of 2.2 and 3.5 km (2 mi).
There were no German rocket societies after the collapse of the [[Verein für Raumschiffahrt|VfR]], and civilian rocket tests were forbidden by the new [[Nazi Germany|Nazi regime]]. Only military development was allowed, and to this end, a larger facility was erected at the village of Peenemünde in northern Germany on the [[Baltic Sea]]. Dornberger became the military commander at Peenemünde, with von Braun as technical director. In collaboration with the [[Luftwaffe]], the Peenemünde group developed liquid-fuel rocket engines for aircraft and [[jet-assisted takeoff]]s. They also developed the long-range [[V-2 rocket|A-4]] [[ballistic missile]] and the [[supersonic]] [[Wasserfall missile|Wasserfall]] [[Surface-to-air missile|anti-aircraft missile]].
In Germany at this time, this was an exceptional promotion for an engineer who was only 31 years old.{{original research inline|date=March 2021}}
That line appears in the film ''[[I Aim at the Stars]]'', a 1960 biographical film of von Braun.
===Arrest and release by the Nazi regime===
He therefore recommended that von Braun work more closely with Kammler to solve the problems of the V-2. Von Braun claimed to have replied that the problems were merely technical and he was confident that they would be solved with Dornberger's assistance.{{fact|date=November 2021}}
...where he was held for two weeks without knowing the charges against him.{{fact|date=November 2021}}
===Surrender to the Americans===
On 29 April 1945, Oberammergau was captured by the Allied forces who seized the majority of the engineering team.{{fact|date=November 2021}}
The [[Red Army]] eventually took over Thuringia as part of the [[Soviet occupation zone]] after 1 July 1945, as agreed by the [[Yalta Conference]].
Initially, he was recruited to the U.S. under a program called [[Operation Overcast]], subsequently known as [[Operation Paperclip]]. There is evidence, however, that British intelligence and scientists were the first to interview him in depth, eager to gain information that they knew U.S. officials would deny them.{{citation needed|date=June 2021}} The team included the young L.S. Snell, then the leading British rocket engineer, later chief designer of [[Rolls-Royce Limited]] and inventor of the [[Concorde]]'s engines. The specific information the British gleaned remained top secret, both from the Americans and from the other allies.{{citation needed|date=December 2014}}
==American career==
===U.S. Army career===
The Jupiter-C successfully launched the West's first satellite, [[Explorer 1]], on 31 January 1958. This event signaled the birth of America's space program.{{fact|date=November 2021}}
Despite the work on the Redstone rocket, the 12 years from 1945 to 1957 were probably some of the most frustrating for von Braun and his colleagues. In the [[Soviet Union]], [[Sergei Korolev]] and his team of scientists and engineers plowed ahead with several new rocket designs and the [[Sputnik]] program, while the American government was not very interested in von Braun's work or views and embarked only on a very modest rocket-building program. In the meantime, the press called attention to von Braun's past as a member of the SS and the [[slave labor]] used to build his V-2 rockets.{{citation needed|date=April 2013}}
===Popular concepts for a human presence in space===
Repeating the pattern he had established during his earlier career in Germany, von Braun – while directing military rocket development in the real world – continued to entertain his engineer-scientist's dream of a future in which rockets would be used for [[space exploration]]. However, he was no longer at risk of being sacked – as American public opinion of Germans began to recover, von Braun found himself increasingly in a position to popularize his ideas. The 14 May 1950 headline of ''[[The Huntsville Times]]'' ("Dr. von Braun Says Rocket Flights Possible to Moon") might have marked the beginning of these efforts. Von Braun's ideas rode a publicity wave that was created by science fiction movies and stories.{{fact|date=November 2021}}
[[File:President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Dr. von Braun and Others.jpg|thumb|Von Braun with President [[Dwight D. Eisenhower]], 1960; after the loss of the US space race in 1957, the American leadership agreed to Braun's main role in the design of space rockets]]
In 1952, von Braun first published his concept of a crewed [[space station]] in a ''[[Collier's Weekly]]'' magazine series of articles titled "[[Man Will Conquer Space Soon!]]". These articles were illustrated by the space artist [[Chesley Bonestell]] and were influential in spreading his ideas. Frequently, von Braun worked with fellow German-born space advocate and science writer [[Willy Ley]] to publish his concepts, which, unsurprisingly, were heavy on the engineering side and anticipated many technical aspects of space flight that later became reality.{{fact|date=November 2021}}
The space station (to be constructed using rockets with recoverable and reusable ascent stages) would be a [[Stanford torus|toroid]] structure, with a diameter of {{convert|250|ft|m}}; this built on the concept of a [[rotating wheel space station|rotating wheel-shaped station]] introduced in 1929 by [[Herman Potočnik]] in his book ''The Problem of Space Travel – The Rocket Motor''. The space station would spin around a central docking nave to provide [[artificial gravity]], and would be assembled in a {{convert|1,075|mi|km|adj=on}} two-hour, high-inclination [[Earth orbit]] allowing observation of essentially every point on Earth on at least a daily basis. The ultimate purpose of the space station would be to provide an assembly platform for crewed [[Moon|lunar]] expeditions. More than a decade later, the movie version of [[2001: A Space Odyssey (film)|''2001: A Space Odyssey'']] would draw heavily on the design concept in its visualization of an orbital space station.{{fact|date=November 2021}}
Von Braun envisioned these expeditions as very large-scale undertakings, with a total of 50 astronauts traveling in three huge spacecraft (two for crew, one primarily for cargo), each {{convert|49|m|2|abbr=on}} long and {{convert|33|m|2|abbr=on}} in diameter and driven by a rectangular array of 30 rocket propulsion engines.
<nowiki><ref name=GalleryOfSketches>{{cite web |url=http://er.jsc.nasa.gov/seh/lunarlan.html |title=Gallery of Wernher von Braun Moonship Sketches |date=30 November 2004 |website=The Space Educator's Handbook |publisher=NASA Johnson Space Center |first=Jerry |last=Woodfill |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100530062400/http://er.jsc.nasa.gov/seh/lunarlan.html |archive-date=30 May 2010 }}</ref>
Upon arrival, astronauts would establish a permanent lunar base in the Sinus Roris region by using the emptied cargo holds of their craft as shelters, and would explore their surroundings for eight weeks. This would include a 400 km (249 mi) expedition in pressurized rovers to the crater Harpalus and the Mare Imbrium foothills.[citation needed]
At this time, von Braun also worked out preliminary concepts for a human mission to Mars that used the space station as a staging point. His initial plans, published in The Mars Project (1952), had envisaged a fleet of 10 spacecraft (each with a mass of 3,720 metric tonnes), three of them uncrewed and each carrying one 200-tonne winged lander<ref name=GalleryOfSketches/> in addition to cargo, and nine crew vehicles transporting a total of 70 astronauts. The engineering and astronautical parameters of this gigantic mission were thoroughly calculated. A later project was much more modest, using only one purely orbital cargo ship and one crewed craft. In each case, the expedition would use minimum-energy Hohmann transfer orbits for its trips to Mars and back to Earth.[citation needed]
NASA career
Nonetheless, on 1 March 1970, von Braun and his family relocated to Washington, DC, when he was assigned the post of NASA's Deputy Associate Administrator for Planning at NASA Headquarters. After a series of conflicts associated with the truncation of the Apollo program, and facing severe budget constraints, von Braun retired from NASA on 26 May 1972. Not only had it become evident by this time that NASA and his visions for future U.S. space flight projects were incompatible, but also it was perhaps even more frustrating for him to see popular support for a continued presence of man in space wane dramatically once the goal to reach the Moon had been accomplished.[citation needed]
Career after NASA
Von Braun continued his work to the extent possible, which included accepting invitations to speak at colleges and universities, as he was eager to cultivate interest in human spaceflight and rocketry, particularly his desire to encourage the next generation of aerospace engineers.[citation needed]
Von Braun helped establish and promote the National Space Institute, a precursor of the present-day National Space Society, in 1975, and became its first president and chairman. In 1976, he became scientific consultant to Lutz Kayser, the CEO of OTRAG, and a member of the Daimler-Benz board of directors. However, his deteriorating health forced him to retire from Fairchild on 31 December 1976. When the 1975 National Medal of Science was awarded to him in early 1977, he was hospitalized, and unable to attend the White House ceremony.[citation needed]
- The von Braun crater on the Moon is named after him.[citation needed]
- Von Braun received a total of 12 honorary doctorates; among them, on 8 January 1963, one from the Technical University of Berlin, from which he had graduated.[citation needed]
- Von Braun was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1967 for designing and developing rockets and missiles.
- In Huntsville, Alabama:
- Von Braun was responsible for the creation of the Research Institute at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. As a result of his vision, the university is one of the leading universities in the nation for NASA-sponsored research. The building housing the university's Research Institute was named in his honor, Von Braun Research Hall, in 2000.[citation needed]
- The Von Braun Center (built in 1975) in Huntsville is named in von Braun's honor.[citation needed]
- The Von Braun Astronomical Society in Huntsville was founded as the Rocket City Astronomical Association by von Braun and was later renamed after him.[citation needed]
- Several German cities (Bonn, Neu-Isenburg, Mannheim, Mainz), and dozens of smaller towns have streets named after von Braun.[citation needed]
- ...In February 2014, the school was finally renamed "Staatliches Gymnasium Friedberg" and distanced itself from the name von Braun, citing he was "no role-model for our pupils".[citation needed]
- An avenue in the Annadale section of Staten Island, New York, was named after him in 1977.[citation needed]
- Von Braun was voted into the U.S. Space and Rocket Center Hall of Fame in 2007.[citation needed]
