Page 110 - (DK) How to be a GENIUS?

Wernher

von Braun

Wernher von Braun was a visionary inventor: a man who
saw the future and made it happen. He was the scientist
V
A rocket-propelled Fritz Opel hurtles down behind the Saturn V rocket that carried men to the Moon,
the AVUS racetrack in Berlin in 1928.
and he masterminded the development of the smaller
rockets that preceded it. He also had ambitious plans
for an orbiting space station and manned flights to
Liftoff
Born in 1912, von Braun developed a Mars. But all this was based on his early experience
passion for astronomy when he was a child. developing the deadly V-2 missile for Nazi Germany.
Inspired by the rocket-powered vehicles of
Fritz von Opel and the work of rocket
pioneer Hermann Oberth, he became
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obsessed by space travel and joined the At the age of 12, von Braun was
Spaceflight Society at the University of
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arrested for attaching rockets to a cart
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Berlin to assist Oberth in rocket research. a rre t ed fo r a tt a c h i n g ro c k et to a c a rt
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a n d s et i n g fir e to t h e m i n t h e
and setting fire to them in the
crowded streets of Berlin.
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Relaunch
In 1945, von Braun surrendered to the
American forces, who took him to the
U.S. Eventually, he was joined by a team
of 127 technicians who had worked on
the V-2 rocket program. Their task was
to develop the V-2 into a nuclear missile.
However, in 1958, one of von Braun’s
rockets was used to launch the first
U.S. satellite, Explorer 1. This marked
the beginning of the space race
between Russia and the U.S. that
was to lead to the Moon landings.
A captured V-2 rocket is launched by
British scientists in October 1945, soon
after the war ended.
Wrong target
In the late 1930s, the German Nazi authorities
persuaded von Braun to develop the V-2 rocket as A n a s to n i s h i n g to t a l o f 3 , 2 2 5 V- 2 s w ere
to
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to
An astonishing total of 3,225 V-2s were
a weapon. Yet von Braun always said that he was
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really only interested in space travel. On hearing launched against Allied targets toward the
the news that the first operational V-2 had hit
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London, England, he said, “The rocket worked end of World War II—up to ten per day.
perfectly except for landing on the wrong planet.”
108
(c) 2011 Dorling Kindersley. All Rights Reserved.
(c) 2011 Dorling Kindersley. All Rights Reserved.