From 1937, von Braun was Technical Director of the new Army Experimental Institute Peenemünde. Among other things, he was responsible for the development of the A4 unit, the first large rocket with liquid fuel. From August 1943, after Operation Hydra’s bombing of Peenemünde, mass production of the rocket was relocated to other locations in the German Reich and named V2 (Vergeltungswaffe 2) after its first operations in London in September 1944. Aggregate 4 was the first operational liquid-engine surface-to-surface rocket ever. Another new feature of this rocket was to track the trajectory with a gyro system and to stabilize and automatically compensate for deviations by means of actively controlled thrusters and air rudders.
In 1942, a prototype first exceeded a peak height of more than 80 km, and in 1945, it reached 200 km. The Aggregate 4 rocket was defined by the International Aeronautical Association as the first human-made object in space, reaching an altitude of more than 100 km.
In June 1943, a concentration camp subcamp existed in Peenemünde. In addition, there was a second concentration camp, a POW camp in Karlshagen and the camps near Trassenheide, in which a total of 1400 prisoners were housed. In addition, there were over 3,000 "Eastern workers" from Poland and the Soviet Union. Von Braun himself is quoted in the minutes of a meeting of August 25, 1943: "The staff for production of middle parts and rear parts could be removed from prisoner camp F1".
When he first arrived in America, von Braun had assumed that he would quickly embark on an ambitious missile program. However, missile research was still under the control of the military and was thus also affected by the prevailing demobilization. Only as a result of the Korean War did the financial situation improve again. In 1950, von Braun and his team moved to Huntsville, Alabama, to begin the development of the Redstone. This rocket was based on the Aggregate 4 but was larger and more powerful. Their first test flight took place in August 1953. At that time, von Braun was responsible for about 1000 employees.
Von Braun and his team were officially transferred to NASA in October 1959. The decision to build the Saturn rocket (later Saturn I) had already been made. In addition, the Mercury programme was promoted, which was intended to allow an astronaut to fly into space for the first time.
1960 Wernher von Braun became director of the Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama, a position he held until 1970. Seeking a way to outperform the Soviet Union, President Kennedy visited the Marshal Space Flight Center in early May. Here Wernher von Braun convinced him to work on the moon landing, with a timetable and cost plan in the background. Kennedy agreed and, on May 25, 1961, announced the manned flight to the Moon within the decade as a destination before the American Congress.
Over the next few years, the development was accelerated and the Mercury program was replaced by the Gemini. Finally, up to 400,000 people worked on the Apollo program. Two years before the date set by Kennedy, the Saturn developed by Braun took off on its maiden flight with Apollo 4 in 1967. The second manned launch in the following year (Apollo 8) was also the first human flight into lunar orbit. Braun’s greatest success and the fulfilment of his long-standing dreams was the manned moon landing in 1969.
From 1970 to 1972, Wernher von Braun was the director of a new NASA planning office to deal with the future of U.S. space travel. There he fought for a manned Mars mission. However, the programme was discontinued due to funding problems, not least due to the ongoing Vietnam War. He also pushed for technical simplifications of the new space shuttle system, which at the time was much larger and more complex in planning. |
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Originally Posted by jishara
