Wernher von Braun and Related Topics

Intermediate-range ballistic missile

Ballistic missile with a range of 3,000–5,500 km (1,864–3,418 miles), between a medium-range ballistic missile (MRBM) and an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM).

The progenitor for the IRBM was the A4b rocket winged for increased range and based on the famous V-2 (Vergeltung, or "Reprisal", officially called A4) rocket designed by Wernher von Braun; the V-2 was widely used by Nazi Germany at the end of World War II to bomb English and Belgian cities.

Saturn V

American super heavy-lift launch vehicle developed by NASA under the Apollo program for human exploration of the Moon.

Saturn V testing vehicle and flight vehicle configurations

The first stage of Apollo 8 Saturn V being erected in the VAB on February 1, 1968. Engine fairings and fins not yet installed.

An S-II stage hoisted onto the A-2 test stand at the Mississippi Test Facility

The instrument unit for the Apollo 4 Saturn V

Condensation clouds surrounding the Apollo 11 Saturn V as it works its way through the dense lower atmosphere.

Apollo 6 interstage falling away. The engine exhaust from the S-II stage glows as it impacts the interstage.

Apollo 17 S-IVB rocket stage, shortly after transposition and docking with the Lunar Module

Comparison of Saturn V, Shuttle, Ares I, Ares V, Ares IV, and SLS Block 1

Saturn V's F-1 engines—Rocket Park, Houston

S-IVB stage as Skylab, National Air & Space Museum

The largest production model of the Saturn family of rockets, the Saturn V was designed under the direction of Wernher von Braun at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama; the lead contractors were Boeing, North American Aviation, Douglas Aircraft Company, and IBM.

Peenemünde

Municipality on the Baltic Sea island of Usedom in the Vorpommern-Greifswald district in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany.

German scientists such as Wernher von Braun, who worked at the V-2 facility, were known as "Peenemünders".

Marshall Space Flight Center

U.S. government's civilian rocketry and spacecraft propulsion research center.

Ceremony of transfer from Army to NASA July 1, 1960

President Eisenhower unveils a bust of George C. Marshall at the space center with help from Marshall's widow, Katherine Tupper Marshall.

Rockets developed at MSFC and ABMA before it are on display at MSFC.

Lunar Roving Vehicle test article on test track

MSFC engineers tested this articulated arm developed, but not used, for Skylab at a MSFC flat floor facility.

MSFC used the Neutral Buoyancy Facility to test Skylab procedures. Here, engineers are testing procedures for repairing Skylab.

A crane hoists Space Shuttle Pathfinder into the Saturn V Dynamic Test Stand at MSFC to test the procedures in preparation for the dynamic test of Space Shuttle Enterprise.

In August 1945, 127 missile specialists led by Wernher von Braun signed work contracts with the U.S. Army's Ordnance Corps.

Kurt H. Debus, a former V-2 rocket scientist who became a NASA director, sitting between U.S. President John F. Kennedy and U.S. Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1962 at a briefing at Blockhouse 34, Cape Canaveral Missile Test Annex.

Operation Paperclip

Secret United States intelligence program in which more than 1,600 Nazi German scientists, engineers, and technicians were taken from former Nazi Germany to the U.S. for government employment after the end of World War II in Europe, between 1945 and 1959.

V-2 rocket launching, Peenemünde, on the north-east Baltic German coast. (1943)

The Allied zones of occupation in post-war Germany, highlighting the Soviet zone (red), the inner German border (heavy black line), and the zone from which British and American troops withdrew in July 1945 (purple). The provincial boundaries are those of Nazi Germany, before the present Länder (federal states) were established.

A group of 104 rocket scientists (aerospace engineers) at Fort Bliss, Texas

Then U.S. Army Major Robert B. Staver, Chief of the Jet Propulsion Section of the Research and Intelligence Branch of the U.S. Army Ordnance Corps, used the Osenberg List to compile his list of German scientists to be captured and interrogated; Wernher von Braun, Germany's premier rocket scientist, headed Major Staver's list.

NASA

Independent agency of the U.S. federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research.

L. Gordon Cooper, photographed by a slow-scan television camera aboard Faith 7 (May 16, 1963)

Richard Gordon performs a spacewalk to attach a tether to the Agena Target Vehicle on Gemini 11, 1966

Buzz Aldrin on the Moon, 1969 (photograph by Neil Armstrong)

Skylab in 1974, seen from the departing Skylab 4 CSM.

Soviet and American crews with spacecraft model, 1975.

The International Space Station as seen from during STS-134.

Artist's rendering of Altair lander landed on the Moon.

The Goddard Institute for Space Studies of Columbia University in New York City

William H. Pickering, (center) JPL Director, President John F. Kennedy, (right). NASA Administrator James E. Webb (background) discussing the Mariner program, with a model presented.

NASA's budget from 1958 to 2012 as a percentage of federal budget

An artist's conception, from NASA, of an astronaut planting a US flag on Mars. A human mission to Mars has been discussed as a possible NASA mission since the 1960s.

NASA EDGE broadcasting live from White Sands Missile Range in 2010

Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge, California

George C. Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama

Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in Houston

Various nebulae observed from a NASA space telescope

Hardware comparison of Apollo, Gemini, and Mercury{{refn|group= note|From left to right: Launch vehicle of Apollo (Saturn 5), Gemini (Titan 2) and Mercury (Atlas). Left, top-down: Spacecraft of Apollo, Gemini and Mercury. The Saturn IB and Mercury-Redstone launch vehicles are left out.}}

Hubble Space Telescope, astronomy observatory in Earth orbit since 1990. Also visited by the Space Shuttle.

Concept of cargo transport from Space Shuttle to Nuclear Shuttle, 1960s

Vision mission for an interstellar precursor spacecraft by NASA, 2000s

Langley's Mars Ice Dome design for a Mars habitat, 2010s

A significant contributor to NASA's entry into the Space Race with the Soviet Union was the technology from the German rocket program led by Wernher von Braun, who was now working for the Army Ballistic Missile Agency (ABMA), which in turn incorporated the technology of American scientist Robert Goddard's earlier works.

Sturmbannführer

Nazi Party paramilitary rank equivalent to major that was used in several Nazi organizations, such as the SA, SS, and the NSFK.

Max Hansen, Sturmbannführer of the Waffen-SS

The rank was held by Wernher von Braun, who developed the V-2 rocket, and later designed the Saturn V rocket for the U.S. space program.

V-2 rocket

The world’s first long-range guided ballistic missile.

Wernher von Braun at Peenemünde Army Research Center

Wind tunnel model of an A4 in the German Museum of Technology in Berlin

Heinrich Maier and his group helped the allies to fight the V-2, which was produced by concentration camp prisoners.

Captured V-2 on public display in Antwerp, 1945. Exhaust vanes and external rudders in tail section shown.

A sectioned V-2 engine on display at the Deutsches Museum, Munich (2006).

23 June 1943 RAF reconnaissance photo of V-2s at Test Stand VII

A V-2 launched from Test Stand VII in summer 1943

One of the victims of a V-2 that struck Teniers Square, Antwerp, Belgium on 27 November 1944. A British military convoy was passing through the square at the time; 126 (including 26 Allied soldiers) were killed.

Ruined buildings at Whitechapel, London, left by the penultimate V-2 to strike the city on 27 March 1945; the rocket killed 134 people. The final V-2 to fall on London killed one person at Orpington later the same day.

The extent of damage caused to a London residential area due to a single V-2 strike in January 1945

Rocket engine used by V-2, Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin (2014)

Operation Backfire V-2 rocket on Meillerwagen (SI Negative #76-2755).

The first photo of Earth from space was taken from a V-2 launched by US scientists on 24 October 1946.

R-1 rocket (V-2 rebuilt by the Soviet Union) on a Vidalwagen at Kapustin Yar

V-2 rocket located at the Australian War Memorial Treloar Centre Annex

A rusty V-2 engine in the original underground production facilities at the Dora-Mittelbau concentration camp memorial site.

V-2 on display in Musée de l'Armée, Paris.

The propulsion unit from a V-2 that broke up in air on display (with exhaust-exit pointed up) Norfolk and Suffolk Aviation Museum

Research into military use of long-range rockets began when the graduate studies of Wernher von Braun attracted the attention of the German Army.

Hermann Oberth

Austro-Hungarian-born German physicist and engineer.

Hermann Oberth as a young boy, c. undefined 1901

Opel RAK.1 - World's first public flight of a manned rocket-powered plane on September 30, 1929

Hermann Oberth with Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, 1961

The bust of Hermann Oberth in front of Sibiu city hall

Sculpture of Hermann Oberth in Sighișoara located at bottom of the main pathway leading from the lower town towards the citadel (summer 2017).

Oberth became a member of the Verein für Raumschiffahrt (VfR) – the "Spaceflight Society" – an amateur rocketry group that had taken great inspiration from his book, and Oberth acted as something of a mentor to the enthusiasts who joined the Society, which included persons such as Wernher von Braun, Rolf Engel, Rudolf Nebel or Paul Ehmayr.

Human mission to Mars

The idea of sending humans to Mars has been the subject of aerospace engineering and scientific studies since the late 1940s as part of the broader exploration of Mars.

The minimum distance between the orbits of Mars and Earth from 2014 to 2061, measured in astronomical units

Three views of Mars, Hubble Space Telescope, 1997

Inserts depict observation and analysis to find a safe landing site

Comparison of radiation doses – includes the amount detected on the trip from Earth to Mars by the RAD inside the MSL (2011–2013). Vertical axis is in logarithmic scale, so the dose over a Mars year is about 15 times the DOE limit, not less than twice, as a quick glance might suggest. The actual dose would depend on factors such as spacecraft design and natural events such as solar flares.

Artistic vision of spacecraft providing artificial gravity by spinning. (see also Centrifugal force)

Fuel is mined from Phobos with the help of a nuclear reactor.

Artist's conception of the Mars Excursion Module (MEM) proposed in a NASA study in 1963. Crew wear Mars suits on surface EVA from the module.

Artist's conception of a human mission on the surface of Mars
(1989 painting by Les Bossinas of Lewis Research Center for NASA)

NASA Mars habitat concept for DRA 1.0, derived from the Mars Direct Architecture, 1995

Artist's concept of crew members setting up weather monitoring equipment on the surface of Mars

Artwork featuring astronauts enduring a Mars dust storm near a rover

Project Constellation included an Orion Mars Mission.

Concept for NASA's Design Reference Mission Architecture 5.0 (2009)

Artist impression of the Deep Space Transport, about to dock with the Lunar Gateway

Artist's rendering of the planned Orion/DSH/Cryogenic Propulsion Module assembly.

Depiction of plants growing in a Mars base. NASA plans to grow plants for space food.

NASA has stated that robots will prepare an underground base for a human surface mission.

Artist concept of SCIM gathering a sample of the Martian atmosphere

Wernher von Braun was the first person to make a detailed technical study of a Mars mission.