E N G I N E E R I N G L E G E N D S
Wernher von Braun and the Race
to the Moon
R I C H A R D
Of the four men who can right-
fully lay claim to the title “Father
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of Rocket Science and Modern
Rocketry”—Konstantin Tsiolkovsky
(1857–1935), Robert Goddard
(1882–1945), Hermann Oberth
(1894–1989), and Wernher von
Braun (1912–1977)—only one of
them, von Braun (Fig. 1), actually
engineered and built massive rock-
ets that took humans to the moon.
Although decades apart, all four
in their youth were fascinated and
greatly intrigued by the science
fiction writings about space travel
by Jules Verne (1828–1905) and
later by H. G. Wells (1866–1946)—
in particular, From Earth to the
Moon (1865) by Verne and War
of the Worlds (1898) by Wells. In
addition to his post–Civil War
space novel describing exploration
of the moon, Verne also gained
considerable fame for other future-
predicting masterpieces such as
Around the World in 80 Days and
Twenty Thousand Leagues under the
Sea.
Figure 1. Wernher von Braun (photo
courtesy of NASA).
G. W E I N G A R D T , P. E . , D
The scruffy, full-bearded Tsiol-
kovsky, a Russian schoolteacher
by profession, was basically a vi-
sionary and chalkboard theorist,
whereas American-born Goddard,
highly secretive, guarded in his
work, and suspicious of others,
mostly targeted the upper atmos-
phere for his projects. Oberth
was von Braun’s mentor and, like
Tsiolkovsky, more noted for his
theoretical work than for being
a builder of useful rockets. Von
Braun, however, enamored with
the possibilities of space travel
from early boyhood, took Verne’s
and Wells’s tales of exploration
from dreams to reality and pro-
duced mighty rockets that orbited
the earth and investigated the dark
depths of the universe.
Von Braun’s three most cel-
ebrated rockets were the V-2
(Fig. 2) for the German military
and the Redstone and Saturn for
the U.S. government during the
Cold War with the Soviet Union.
Hitler used the V-2 to rain terror
and destruction on London and
Western Europe near the end of
World War II. The Redstone
sent America’s first man into space
and its first man into orbit, while
the Saturn put humans on the
moon.
Von Braun was the consum-
mate can-do mover and shaker.
He almost singlehandedly rescued
America’s prestige from the embar-
rassment of Sputnik I and II and
drove the U.S. lunar mission against
a host of naysayers, leading to that
unforgettable moment when the
whole world held its breath until
Americans on the moon could
JANUARY 2012 26 Leadership and Management in Engineering
Leadership Manage. Eng., 2012, 12(1): 26-36
I S T .M.ASCE
report, “Houston: Tranquility Base
here. The Eagle has landed!”
By wide consensus—and be-
cause of countless history-altering
results achieved—von Braun has
emerged as the most recognized
and iconic space engineer-scientist
of all time. His name has be-
come universally synonymous with
modern rocket engineering, tech-
nology, and science. A visionary
genius, von Braun was the most
prominent spokesman for space
exploration in the United States
from the 1950s until his death.
His work essentially transformed
humanity’s view of itself and how
it fit into the universe. Longtime
acquaintance and Huntsville Times
editor Bob Ward (2005) reported,
“Von Braun was the ‘Superstar
of Space,’ a larger-than-life, near-
mythical figure.”
Highly regarded and respected
by his peers—and by those who
worked with or for him—few engi-
neers in history ever personally
brought to fruition a dream of such
epic proportions. Von Braun was
the right man with the right
stuff at the right time in America’s
nascent space program. While di-
rector of the Fels Planetarium in
Philadelphia, the eminent astrono-
mer, space authority, and writer
Israel Levitt allowed that when
“there arose the need for a man
who could synthesize all the
elements to produce a space
transportation system to fashion
the staircase to the stars ...
Nature [produced] this syn-
thesizing genius ... a remarkably
able and astute figure in
 E N G I N E E R I N G
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Figure 2. Cross-section of V-2 rocket (photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons-
Fastfission).
contemporary science. ...
Wernher was a commanding
figure. He was the type that,
when he walked in the room,
the conversation would stop and
eyes would turn toward his en-
trance.” (quoted in Ward 2005)
Concerning von Braun’s contri-
butions to America’s lunar expedi-
tion, the legendary newscaster
Walter Cronkite stated,
“As people later look back for
those heroes that made the Moon
landing possible, they will fixate
undoubtedly on the astronauts
who did it—Armstrong and the
rest. But they will also look at
the engineers. They will recog-
nize it as an engineering feat.
And when they do, they will
fix on von Braun as certainly one
of the greatest space engineering
Leadership and Management in Engineering
L E G E N D S
pioneers.” (quoted in Ward
2005)
In 2003, on the 100th anniver-
sary of the Wright brothers’ first
powered airplane flight, Aviation
Week and Space Technology coordi-
nated a worldwide survey to
identify the “Top 100 Stars of
Aerospace.” Von Braun was first
among all space figures and sec-
ond in the overall category, be-
hind only the Wright brothers
themselves.
What kind of person was
von Braun?
One of his harshest critics, espe-
cially of his World War II wartime
conduct, Michael Neufeld (2007)
argued that von Braun resembled
Goethe’s Faust. He used his talents
to build great engineering works
for the betterment of humanity but
served some questionable regimes
27 JANUARY 2012
Leadership Manage. Eng., 2012, 12(1): 26-36
in the process. In his book Von
Braun: Dreamer of Space, Engineer of
War, published 30 years after von
Braun’s death, Neufeld called his
modern-day Faust “the most influ-
ential rocket engineer and space-
flight advocate of the twentieth
century; a symbol of the tempta-
tions of engineers and scientists”
and someone who was willing to
work on dangerous weapons for
nefarious regimes as a means to
realize his own goals.
The general consensus of the
vast majority of those who knew
him well, however, was that von
Braun was a remarkably well-
rounded individual, someone who
loved life, classical music, and art
and had charisma, limitless energy,
dignity, and integrity; a family
man who loved swimming, sports,
hunting, the outdoors, and travel-
ing; and a busy person who found
the time to (and delighted in)
popularizing science for children.
An archetype for successful leader-
ship, “he handled huge and dif-
ficult projects while keeping a
winning smile and a sense of hu-
mor even in the most stressful of
situations. He was also a Christian
and creationist with a spiritual
side that kept him humble, grate-
ful, unselfish, and strong” (Ward
2005).
Among America’s first seven
original astronauts (Fig. 3), John
Glenn was the first to orbit the
earth; February 2012 marks the
50th anniversary of this event.
Von Braun hosted the seven astro-
nauts at his home in Huntsville,
Alabama, and Glenn reported,
“The German-born engineer
[von Braun], then in his late
forties, was a handsome, broad-
shouldered man with thick dark
hair. His library showed him
to be a man whose interests were
not confined to rocket science.
I wandered into the book-lined
 E N G I N E E R I N G
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Figure 3. Original seven U.S. astronauts with von Braun (left to right): Gus
Grissom, Wally Schirra, Alan Shepard, John Glenn, Scott Carpenter, Gordon
Cooper, Deke Slayton, von Braun (photo courtesy of NASA).
room expecting to find noth-
ing but tomes on engineering,
astronomy, physics, and other
technical matters. There were
many of those. But I was im-
pressed to find even more exten-
sive collections in fields such
as religion, comparative reli-
gion, philosophy, history, and
government.”
EARLY LIFE
Born on March 23, 1912, in
the picturesque town of Wirsitz,
Germany (now part of Poland and
known as Wyrzysk), Wernher
was the middle son of the Baron
Magnus von Braun and Baroness
Emmy (von Quistorp) von Braun.
Raised in England, Emmy had an
aristocratic Scandinavian–German
background and was able to trace
her lineage back to Valdemar I
of Denmark (1131–1182). The
baron, born in 1878 in Prussia,
had extensive farming and bank-
ing interests, land, and estates in
both Prussia and Silesia. He was
also a provincial and national gov-
ernment official in the German
agricultural ministries.
As decreed by the rules of
Prussian aristocracy, the three
L E G E N D S
von Braun boys became barons at
birth. However, even though of
noble rank, being a baron in those
days was somewhat low in the
German aristocratic pecking order.
The young men nonetheless expe-
rienced significant privileges and
the finer things in life and were
taught to take their station in life
and its attendant responsibility
seriously. The rural river town set-
ting in which they grew up also
encouraged a wide range of out-
doors activities—canoeing, hiking,
horseback riding, fishing, hunting,
exploring, and Tom Sawyer–type
mischief.
The von Braun family’s member-
ship in European nobility, with its
accompanying status and wealth,
supported substantial dwellings, ser-
vants, and significant landholdings
cared for by local workfolk. For
young Wernher and his brothers,
it was a cultured atmosphere of
good manners, tradition, and the
appreciation of music, art, literature,
and higher education: “At the home
of Baron Magnus von Braun in
Wirsitz, in the Prussian province of
Posen, life was filled with zest for
serious reading, classical music and
good conversation in any of half a
dozen languages” (Bergaust 1960).
JANUARY 2012 28 Leadership and Management in Engineering
Leadership Manage. Eng., 2012, 12(1): 26-36
Wernher was only 6 when his
paternal grandfather Maximilian
von Braun died and 16 when his
paternal grandmother Eleanor von
Braun (née von Gostkowski) passed
away. Both were strong personal-
ities who were readily available
while Wernher and his siblings
were maturing.
As a boy, Wernher learned to
play the cello and piano and even
took lessons from the great German
composer Paul Hindemith (1895–
1963). In his early teens, Wernher
frequently composed his own mu-
sic. For a time, his parents thought
he would make music his career.
Even though that didn’t happen,
von Braun maintained his piano-
playing skills throughout his life,
often expertly playing classical
works like Beethoven’s “Moonlight
Sonata” for friends and colleagues.
(Years later, after he had become a
U.S. citizen, he was invited to try
out the majestic organ in the
Mormon Tabernacle on a visit to
Salt Lake City. He promptly sat
down and played “A Mighty
Fortress Is Our God” with great
skill, to everyone’s delight and
amazement.)
In school the three von Braun
boys all did well. However,
Wernher was the most gifted. Said
their father, “Sigismund and
Magnus are clever, but they are
ordinary clever people. Wernher
is a genius” (Ward 2005). “He
had a mind like a dry sponge,
soaking up every bit of knowl-
edge as eagerly as he could” (von
Braun 1955).
Wernher was also a voracious
reader. Among the books he liked
to read best were science fiction sto-
ries about space travel. They fired
his imagination. He even wrote his
own tales. One story, “Lunetta”
(“Little Moon”), published in a dis-
tinguished local German maga-
zine, dealt with a rocket flight to
 E N G I N E E R I N G
a space station during which the
crew wore space suits and observed
the heavens through special win-
dows in their spacecraft.
In addition to absorbing the
fictional stories of Verne and
Wells, on Braun also read factual,
nonfiction books about activities
in space like Hermann Oberth’s
1923 scientific classic, The Rocket
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into Interplanetary Space. It promp-
ted him to focus on mastering
geometry, trigonometry, and higher
mathematics so he could better
deal with the physics and intricacies
of rocketry.
When he was 13, Wernher was
given an astronomical telescope by
his mother as a gift on his confir-
mation in the Lutheran church.
Shortly thereafter, he decided to
focus on rocketry and the explora-
tion of space for his life’s work.
Astronomy and visions of traveling
to the moon, Mars, and the other
planets began to consume him.
Still in his early teens, Wernher
organized a local astronomy club
whose activities included making
telescopes and building rockets
and writing about astronomy and
life on other planets. The efforts
of the club’s members to assemble
rockets using junk auto parts and
other materials were not unlike
those depicted in the popular
1999 Hollywood movie October Sky.
One such project spearheaded by
Wernher and his older brother
Sigismund, the building of a rocket-
powered wagon, actually material-
ized. The jet-propelled contraption
blasted away down a local road, out
of control, striking and damaging
several things along the way and
finally crashing and causing even
more damage. The baron quickly
and severely disciplined the two
and put an abrupt end to any more
such foolishness.
While in high school, Wernher
sent a paper he had written on
Leadership and Management in Engineering
L E G E N D S
liquid-fueled rockets to Oberth
and received an encouraging letter.
It was the beginning a lifelong
relationship between the two, first
as mentor–student, then as equals,
and finally with von Braun as the
leader and Oberth as his consul-
tant. In 1929, when he was just
17, Wernher joined the elite
German Rocket Society (Verein für
Raumschiffarht) in which Oberth
was a leading figure and major
force. Soon von Braun was heavily
involved, assisting his mentor in
testing sophisticated rockets and
engines.
After graduating from high
school, Wernher enrolled in a
mechanical engineering degree pro-
gram, with emphasis on aeronaut-
ical topics, at the Charlottenburg
Institute of Technology in Berlin.
Never shy, the strapping young
von Braun wrote a letter to Albert
Einstein (1879–1955) with aero-
space questions. Upon receiving
a reply from the world’s greatest
theoretical physicist addressing his
rocketry-related questions, Wernher
showed it proudly to his parents
and frequently to his professors
and fellow students.
CAREER IN GERMANY
In the winter of 1931–1932,
von Braun and the results of his
rocket work with Oberth gained
the interest of the German mili-
tary establishment, which had a
small rocket development program
under the direction of Walter
Dornberger, a prominent German
army officer. Offers to join up with
Dornberger’s group began to be
made.
Wernher received his bache-
lor’s degree from Charlottenburg
in 1932. Then 2 years later, in
1934, after focusing on engi-
neering physics and aerospace
design, the 22-year-old earned
29 JANUARY 2012
Leadership Manage. Eng., 2012, 12(1): 26-36
his doctorate in physics from Berlin
University. As a means of further-
ing his childhood dream to build
powerful rockets capable of taking
mankind into space, he went to
work full time for Dornberger
and the German army. Whether
von Braun knew it or not,
Dornberger’s group wasn’t inter-
ested in rocket research and devel-
opment merely to take man into
outer space. They were becoming
much more interested in develop-
ing deadly long-range ballistic
missiles.
In 1933, two unrelated events
occurred in Berlin that would
influence von Braun’s future and
career. On the more mundane side,
von Braun, after first qualifying to
fly gliders, received his private
pilot’s license for motorized air-
craft, one of his boyhood goals.
Second, on the much more seri-
ous side, Adolph Hitler became
chancellor of Germany. With his
rapid rise to power came control
of Germany by his Nazi party.
The tranquil and comfortable life
successful German families like
the von Brauns—as well as others
around the world—had been en-
joying would soon be gone forever.
Shortly to surface would be the
unimaginable ugliness of Hitler’s
dictatorial policies and actions
and the pushing of the world into
the most devastating war in
history.
Because modern rocket research
and development demanded more
elaborate and refined facilities
than those at which von Braun
and Oberth had been working, a
completely new, modern, leading-
edge complex was constructed at
Peenemünde on the Baltic Sea
in northern Germany under
Dornberger’s supervision. Von
Braun’s team moved to the suppos-
edly secret new complex in 1935.
Once there, mostly left alone
 E N G I N E E R I N G
to pursue research and testing
of liquid-fuel rockets, von Braun’s
groundbreaking work quickly
launched him to the forefront as
one of the world’s foremost rock-
etry experts. He was widely recog-
nized as the leader of the rocket
team responsible for developing
Germany’s powerful A-4 rocket.
At a length of 46 ft and weigh-
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ing 27,000 lb, the A-4 flew at
speeds in excess of 3,500 miles
per hour and could deliver a
2,000-lb warhead to a target
500-plus miles away. After British
bombers inflicted severe damage
and casualties at the test center
during a surprise air raid in late
1943, Peenemünde operations were
moved underground—and the A-4
was renamed the V-2 rocket by
the Nazis for “Vengeance Weapon
Number 2.” It was used extensively
late in World War II in a last-ditch
effort to save Germany from defeat.
Considered von Braun’s most suc-
cessful brainchild, the V-2 would
be the immediate antecedent of
the rockets later developed by both
the United States and the Soviet
Union in their space programs in
the 1950s.
Up until the latter part of the
war, top officials in the Nazi re-
gime largely ignored von Braun’s
rocket team as they did not see
rockets as having much military
potential. By and large, most of
Hitler’s top-ranking generals con-
sidered rocket research foolishness
and rockets of little use. Because
of this, Nazi intrusions into von
Braun’s activities were only a
nuisance and irritant to his decid-
edly nonpolitical team until in-
creasingly successful V-2 launches
suddenly attracted Hitler’s full
attention. Then von Braun’s rock-
ets quickly became Germany’s pro-
claimed “secret wonder weapon.”
Heinrich Himmler, head of
the German secret police (the
L E G E N D S
Schutzstaffel, or SS) and one of
Hitler’s most loyal henchmen, had
been trying for months to get von
Braun’s full support, even naming
him an SS officer, albeit an unwill-
ing one. Finally, in February 1944,
after consistently being rebuffed by
von Braun, Himmler lost patience
with him and had him arrested
and hauled off to jail. The rocket
engineer was accused of being a
spy, not fully supportive of the na-
tion’s war effort, and interested only
in space travel—and of sabotaging
efforts to make the V-2 militarily
useful.
Eventually, Dornberger, with
the help of Albert Speer, Hitler’s
minister of armaments and war
production and one of the Führer’s
closest confidants, had the charges
dropped and von Braun released.
The two had persuaded Hitler and
Himmler that the “secret weapon”
they had been boasting about pub-
licly could not proceed without its
premiere rocket scientist, Wernher
von Braun.
SURRENDER TO THE ALLIES
By the beginning of 1945, it was
obvious that Germany would not
achieve victory, and von Braun
and his V-2 rocket engineers and
scientists began planning for the
postwar era. Before the hated
Russians could capture their V-2
rocket complex, von Braun master-
minded the surrender of a select
group of his top rocket-team mem-
bers to the U.S. Army. Hundreds
of unused (and in-production) V-2
rockets and top-secret engineering
documents were hidden away in
mines and caves in the mountains
and hills around Peenemünde.
The rumors of von Braun’s
capitulation read like a whodunit
mystery novel. After stealing a
train with forged papers, von
Braun and more than 100
JANUARY 2012 30 Leadership and Management in Engineering
Leadership Manage. Eng., 2012, 12(1): 26-36
members of his team wound their
way through war-torn Germany to
an obscure Austrian alpine village.
There they hid and waited while
solders of the Allied and Russian
Armies combed the land with
orders to capture von Braun and his
people. At the same time, remain-
ing members of the Gestapo were
issued orders to kill von Braun
on sight and destroy any and all
German rocket blueprints and
files.
When news reached von Braun’s
group on April 30, 1945, that
Hitler had committed suicide,
their efforts to locate American
forces intensified. On May 2, von
Braun’s youngest brother, Magnus,
who bore a striking resemblance
to his older brother, rode his bi-
cycle with a white handkerchief
waving down the hill to where
they were and informed them
where the German engineers and
scientists were in hiding, waiting
to surrender. Along with the rocket
team, recovered from the mines
and caves were priceless engineer-
ing documents and an immense
cache of V-2 rockets. The compli-
cated transaction occurred just days
before the Russians gained control
of the territory.
U.S. CAREER
Von Braun’s team of rocket engi-
neers and scientists were whisked
out of Europe and brought to
America under a top-secret U.S.
military effort called Operation
Paperclip. They were taken to Fort
Bliss, Texas, where they were as-
signed to work on the development
of ballistic missiles for the U.S.
Army, eventually launching test
rockets at White Sands Proving
Ground, New Mexico.
Not everyone in America was
pleased with Operation Paper-
clip. Congressman John Dingell,
 E N G I N E E R I N G L E G E N D S

Democrat from Detroit, Michigan,

bluntly denounced the operation
on the floor of the U.S. House of
Representatives as being “nuts.”
He was quoted as follows in the
El Paso Times (July 1, 1947):
“I have never thought that we
were so poor mentally in this
country that we have to go and
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import those Nazi killers to

help us prepare for the defense
of our country. A German is a
Nazi, and a Nazi is a German.
The terms are synonymous.”
The Army team to which von
Braun and his cohorts were assigned
wasn’t the only U.S. military group
working on leading-edge rocket
development after World War II.
The Air Force and Navy also had
their own elite missile programs,
and rivalries between the three
branches were often strong and
bitter. Von Braun, who detested
pointless bureaucratic rules—and
who had had hundreds of top-
notch engineers and scientists re-
porting to and working for him
while in charge of Germany’s re-
search and development center at
Peenemünde—now answered to
secondary-ranking Army person-
nel. As reported in the Chicago
Sun Times (July 10, 1958), such
situations often caused him to
quip, “We can lick gravity, but
sometimes the paperwork is
overwhelming.”
In 1947, von Braun was allowed
to return to Germany to get mar-
ried. On March 1, in Landshut,
Bavaria, the 34-year-old rocket man
wed his 18-year-old first cousin
Maria von Quistorp, whom he had
been wooing in recent years. They
would have three children—Iris
(1948), Margit (1952), and Peter
(1960). On April 14, 1955, both
Wernher and Maria became U.S.
citizens, renouncing their German
citizenship in the process.
Figure 4. Walt Disney (left) with von Braun (photo courtesy of NASA).
In 1950, von Braun’s team was
moved to the Redstone Arsenal
near Huntsville, Alabama, to be-
gin work on what would soon
become America’s historic space
program. Its first noteworthy ac-
complishment was the develop-
ment the Army’s Jupiter ballistic
missile. Huntsville, where von
Braun firmly established his inter-
national stature as America’s lead-
ing rocket engineer-scientist, soon
became known as “Rocket City
USA.”
During the early 1950s, most
people still viewed space flight
the same way they viewed Buck
Rogers and Flash Gordon: as
make-believe. Although the Cold
War had a goodly number of
Americans convinced that building
long-range rockets as weapons
made sense, flying to the moon
belonged in the movies and
comic strips. Von Braun viewed
the Soviet threat as very real;
however, he was also positive that
space travel and exploration were
much more than fantasy. He wrote
a series of articles with breath-
taking illustrations titled “Man
Will Conquer Space Soon” for
Collier’s magazine.
In addition to his Collier’s writ-
ings, von Braun also served as
technical advisory to Walt Disney
(Fig. 4) for several Disney-produced
television specials illustrating how
humans might fly around and op-
erate in space. Even though the
visionary Collier’s and Disney ef-
forts changed many minds about
ventures in space, the subject of hu-
man space travel mostly remained
science fiction rather than fact.
But not for long.
On October 4, 1957, the Soviet
Union shocked the world by
launching the first Earth-orbiting
satellite, a 184-pound ball of
steel and wire called Sputnik I.
To be beaten to the punch dealt
a devastating blow to Americans’
self-image of technological and
engineering superiority. Soviet
Communist party leader Nikita

Leadership and Management in Engineering 31 JANUARY 2012

Leadership Manage. Eng., 2012, 12(1): 26-36

 E N G I N E E R I N G
Khruschev taunted, “The United
States now sleeps under a Soviet
moon” (Glenn 1999). At the same
time, as a step to promote
Communism around the world, he
announced a massive program to
bring increasing numbers of Third
World students to the Soviet Union
to study science and technology.
Wrote John Glenn (1999),
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“The American-made television
sets, transistor radios, and cars
with tail fins that meant tech-
nology to U.S. consumers in
the rich postwar years seemed
frivolous next to the evidence
of Soviet scientific achievement
beeping overhead. Suddenly the
Cold War converged around
the next frontier—space—and
the Soviets had gotten there
first. They hoisted an even
larger satellite—Sputnik II—
into orbit a month later, on
November 3. This one weighed
over a thousand pounds, and
carried a female dog named
Laika.”
Unfortunately, the Soviets were
unable to retrieve Laika alive.
Most Americans were surprised
and thoroughly stunned and awed
by the Soviet space accomplish-
ments. Those in the know like
Von Braun, however, were not.
They had foreseen the possibility
years earlier and had warned that
the Soviet Union, reinforced with
the rocketry know-how of their
rocket experts captured in World
War II, were on the verge of send-
ing a man into space and orbiting
the earth.
Although swift, the U.S. reac-
tion to Sputnik I was disorderly,
inept, and disastrous, largely be-
cause America’s military top brass
snubbed von Braun and his
German team, who were eager,
ready, and able to deliver. Instead
of going with the Army’s von
L E G E N D S
Braun–designed Jupiter rocket,
the powers that be gave the job of
answering the Soviet space chal-
lenge to the Navy’s sleek-looking
Vanguard rocket. As Glenn
(1999) described it,
“America’s first effort to launch
a satellite was a colossal and
widely viewed failure. In
December, a Vanguard rocket
carrying a three-pound satellite
struggled to lift off from Cape
Canaveral, only to settle back
and explode in a ball of orange
flame. It produced headlines
around the world like ‘Kaput-
nik!’ The year ended with us
playing catch-up in a game in
which, it seemed, we were des-
perately behind.”
The embarrassing and shocking
images of America’s exploding
Vanguard rockets, regularly being
broadcast around the world on
TV and in newsprint, were doing
little for the country’s position-
of-strength image. International
public opinion was rapidly wan-
ing. Finally, President Dwight
Eisenhower came around and gave
the rocket specialists from the
Army’s Redstone project, headed
by von Braun, a shot at sending
their rockets upward in hopes of
having significant success and
bolstering the country’s stature.
He was not disappointed. On
January 31, 1958, von Braun’s
modified Redstone Jupiter rocket
flawlessly lifted America’s first
satellite, Explorer 1, into orbit.
Although it carried a much smaller
payload than what the Soviets
were sending up, the mood of
the country was ecstatic.
On July 29, 1958, the U.S.
National Aeronautics and Space
Act was enacted and the National
Aeronautics and Space Admin-
istration (NASA) established. It
was operational by October 1,
JANUARY 2012 32 Leadership and Management in Engineering
Leadership Manage. Eng., 2012, 12(1): 26-36
but U.S. space efforts were still
well behind those of the Russians:
“In September 1959, the Soviets
reasserted their superiority in
space by launching a rocket to
the moon. Luna 2 crash-landed
on the moon’s surface, but as
the headlines pointed out, it
was the first man-made object
ever to reach the moon.” (Glenn
1999)
In an all-out effort to make
up lost ground, NASA instigated
its Marshall Space Center in
Huntsville on July 1, 1960, and
made von Braun its first director
with almost dictatorial powers.
He quickly began producing dra-
matic results.
On May 5, 1961, America sent
its first astronaut, Alan Shepard,
into space, the second man to
do so following Russia’s Yuri
Gagarin, who beat Shepard by a
paltry 3 weeks. (In 1971, Shepard,
commanding the Apollo 14 mis-
sion, would fly to the moon.) Even
though the United States was mak-
ing great strides and the prestige of
its space program gaining ground,
in 1961 Americans were still play-
ing second fiddle to the Russians.
Something dramatic was needed.
From the very beginning of his
term as president, the youthful,
43-year-old John Kennedy was
committed to dramatically out-
doing the Russians in feats of
space exploration. In response to
Kennedy’s 1961 request for ideas
for space projects that could accom-
plish this, von Braun responded in
detail in a letter to Vice President
Lyndon Johnson: “We have an
excellent chance of beating the
Soviets to the first landing of a
crew on the moon (including re-
turn capability, of course)” (von
Braun 1961).
Shortly after, Kennedy made his
historic statement to the nation
 E N G I N E E R I N G L E G E N D S

interplanetary exploration and travel

was slowly but surely being realized.
One does not do rocket science
and engineering and instigate a
national rocketry program alone!
At the height of the lunar prepa-
ration, some 600,000 employees
were involved in tasks from ma-
chining parts to managing large
flight operations centers.
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Although a powerfully built

man, with a imposing presence
and a remarkable ability to lead,
von Braun was a motivator, not a
Figure 5. President John Kennedy (right) with von Braun and model of Saturn dictator. Longtime friend and col-
moon rocket (photo courtesy of NASA). league Ernst Stuhlinger wrote,
that before the decade was out, we advances. On February 20, 1962, “He possessed an irresistible
would put a man on the moon. John Glenn, aboard the Mercury charm, coupled with almost
Once given the go-ahead, von capsule, became the first American magic powers of persuasion,
Braun’s talented team jumped to orbit earth. A year later, Mariner which helped him conquer
into action. Johnson and Kennedy 2 was sent to Venus. Then, in many hesitant or doubtful
made frequent trips to von Braun’s 1964, Mariner 4 made it to Mars. minds. His leadership ability
headquarters in Huntsville to check On June 2, 1966, Surveyor 1 landed combined tremendous drive,
on progress (Fig. 5). on the moon and transmitted humor, grace under pressure,
To meet Kennedy’s bold chal- thousands of high-quality photo- dignity, humility, the power
lenge to put men on the moon, graphs of its surface back to earth. to encourage and inspire, and
von Braun needed to develop and Von Braun’s childhood dream of single-minded vision. He had
build the largest and most power-
ful rocket the world had ever seen,
able to launch huge payloads well
in excess of the capabilities the
Soviets then had in their arsenal.
The eventual result was the majes-
tic Saturn V rocket powered by a
bundle of enormous F-1 engines
(Fig. 6). Manufacturing the enor-
mous Saturn rocket and its pay-
load devices required the world’s
largest (volume-wise) enclosure
ever built—the 1966 Vehicle
Assembly Building (VAB) at the
Kennedy Space Center, Cape
Canaveral, Florida (Fig. 7). Shown
next to the VAB facility in Fig. 7 is
the Saturn V rocket with the Apollo
11 spaceship on top of it. Together
they stood over 40 stories tall.
While concentrating on and
preparing for the upcoming lunar
adventure, America’s rocket people Figure 6. F-1 engines of the Saturn V rocket, with von Braun in the foreground
were also making other noteworthy (photo courtesy of NASA).

Leadership and Management in Engineering 33 JANUARY 2012

Leadership Manage. Eng., 2012, 12(1): 26-36

 E N G I N E E R I N G L E G E N D S

most historic event of the century

to many.
Although technically a Lutheran
from his childhood, von Braun
didn’t really get serious about
his faith until later in life. Said
Stuhlinger,
“In the days of Apollo, through
the 1960s and 70s, a new
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element began to surface in

his conversations, and also in his
speeches and his writings: a
growing interest in religious
thought. Von Braun was not pu-
Figure 7. The massive Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) at the Kennedy Space
Center at Cape Canaveral and Saturn V Apollo 11 (right side of building) before
shy about religion, but neither
the 1969 moon launch; the VAB was the largest building (by volume) in the world was he embarrassed or annoyed
when it opened in 1966 (photo courtesy of NASA). by people asking if he believed
in God: ‘Yes, absolutely!’ would
be his cheerful answer.” (Ordway
the rare and precious gift of included, in a state of total relief and Stuhlinger 1994)
instilling in his many co- and ecstasy (Fig. 9). In a January 10, 1963, American
workers his own enthusiasm On July 19, 1969, the Apollo 11
Weekly article, von Braun wrote,
for hard work and high quality. spacecraft landed on the moon, and
But he was not only a tough Neil Armstrong became the first “Science and religion are not
and demanding task master, human to walk on the moon, the antagonists. On the contrary,
he was a path finder and prob-
lem solver, and he always over-
flowed with an exuberant joy of
life that lighted up many dark
chasms on the road to the stars.”
(Ordway and Stuhlinger 1994)
Even though the mammoth
Saturn V rocket, for which von
Braun was the mastermind, was an
awesome sight, even more amaz-
ing was its record of performance.
Nothing that large, heavy, and
complicated had ever been built,
let alone on time and on schedule.
Plus, it was launched flawlessly
every time it was put into use.
Then, in the summer of 1969,
everything was ready. The ultimate
test, sending a crew out to soft
land on the cratered surface of
the moon, was at hand. The amaz-
ing Saturn V Apollo 11 liftoff car-
rying three U.S. astronauts (Fig. 8)
went off without a hitch, which Figure 8. Moon launch: Liftoff of Saturn V Apollo 11 rocket (photo courtesy of
put NASA officials, von Braun NASA).

JANUARY 2012 34 Leadership and Management in Engineering

Leadership Manage. Eng., 2012, 12(1): 26-36

 E N G I N E E R I N G
Downloaded from ascelibrary.org by Gediz Universitesi on 11/06/23. Copyright ASCE. For personal use only; all rights reserved.
Figure 9. Ecstatic NASA officials reacting to successful liftoff of Saturn V
Apollo 11; von Braun is in the center of photograph, the silver-haired man with
binoculars (photo courtesy of NASA).
they are sisters. It is as difficult
for me to understand a scientist
who does not acknowledge the
presence of a superior rational-
ity behind the existence of the
universe as it is to comprehend
a theologian who would deny
the advances of science. To be-
lieve that everything in the uni-
verse happened by chance would
violate the very objectivity of
science itself. Certainly there are
those who argue that the uni-
verse evolved out of a random
process, but what random pro-
cess could produce the brain
of a man or the system of the
human eye? Some people say
that science has been unable
to prove the existence of a
Designer. They challenge sci-
ence to prove the existence of
God. But, must we really light
a candle to see the sun?” (Von
Braun 1963)
In 1970, NASA moved von
Braun to Washington, DC, to head
up the strategic planning effort for
the agency. For largely political
reasons, the mood of NASA’s top
leadership began changing after
the euphoria of the early Apollo
successes. By the time of Skylab,
von Braun’s influence was waning.
Leadership and Management in Engineering
L E G E N D S
Noting the change, after 2 years in
the capital, von Braun graciously
retired from NASA and went to
work for Fairchild Industries in
Virginia, headed by his longtime
friend Henry Ulm. Unfortunately,
the career change was short. He
was diagnosed with cancer, and in
spite of a few promising remis-
sions, it became clear at age 64
that his days were numbered.
ACCOLADES
By the end of von Braun’s active
career, more than 100 space shuttle
launches had been completed, and
spacecraft were exploring Mars,
Jupiter, and Saturn gathering
valuable scientific data about our
universe:
“Thirty-three Saturn flights
were successfully launched and
twenty-seven Americans sent
to the Moon, twelve of them
to walk on it. Saturns sent nine
astronauts up to Skylab, which
itself was a converted Saturn
upper stage. And, finally, the
last Saturn sent an American
crew up to join a Russian space-
craft in earth orbit.” (Ward
2005)
35 JANUARY 2012
Leadership Manage. Eng., 2012, 12(1): 26-36
After emerging as highly cel-
ebrated national heroes after the
moon landing, the three-member
Apollo 11 flight crew, Neil
Armstrong, Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin,
and Michael Collins, presented von
Braun with a leather-bound book,
First on the Moon, with an in-
scription signed by the three: “To
Wernher, who postulated, pre-
dicted, advertised, conned, pulled
and finally pushed to make us first
on the Moon” (Ward 2005).
In expressing his appreciation
of the exploits of America’s as-
tronauts, von Braun said, “Those
men took craft they had never flown
before. They went where men have
never been before, and came back.
And they did it time after time,
time after time” (Ward 2005).
With his movie-star looks, rock-
star-like celebrity status and perpet-
ual charisma, von Braun was a
much sought after speaker and the
recipient of more than two dozen
honorary doctorates. A member of
numerous professional societies, he
was also the author of dozens of
books and hundreds of articles.
Among the countless medals,
awards, and honors von Braun re-
ceived from around the world were
the following:
• American Astronautics Award
from the American Rocket
Society, 1955
• Robert H. Goddard Memorial
Trophy, 1958
• Distinguished Federal Civilian
Service Award, 1959
• Gold Medal Award from the
British Interplanetary Society,
1961
• NASA Medal for Outstanding
Leadership, 1964
• Smithsonian Institution Langley
Medal, 1967
In the fading days of his illness,
a weak von Braun accepted the
National Medal of Science from
 E N G I N E E R I N G L E G E N D S

landing (Fig. 10) honor his greatest
achievement. A bronze bust of von
Braun is prominently displayed
at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight
Center in Huntsville.
Von Braun passed away quietly
in Alexandria, Virginia, on June
16, 1977, survived by his wife,
Figure 10. U.S. postage stamp com-
children, and grandchildren.
memorating the moon landing (photo
Downloaded from ascelibrary.org by Gediz Universitesi on 11/06/23. Copyright ASCE. For personal use only; all rights reserved.
Von Braun, M. (1955). From
East Prussia to Texas, Helmut
Rauschenbusch-Verlag, Stoll-
hamm, Germany.
Von Braun, W. (1961). “Letter
from von Braun to Lyndon
Johnson, Vice President of
the United States” (Apr. 29).
NASA Historical Reference
Collection, NASA Head-

courtesy of David Weingardt). quarters, Washington, DC.

President Gerald Ford. Von Braun
humbly said, “Isn’t this a great
country! Here I have come in from
another country and they give me
this wonderful honor. Isn’t this a
wonderful country” (Ward 2005).
Numerous awards, lectures, pro-
grams, and places have been named
after von Braun, including the
sprawling downtown von Braun
Civic Center in Huntsville. Loca-
tions on the moon, Earth, and
other planets carry his name, and
postage stamps from around
the globe depicting the moon
REFERENCES
Bergaust, E. (1960). Reaching for the
stars: A biography of the great pio-
neer in space exploration, Wernher
von Braun, Doubleday, Garden
City, NY.
Glenn, J. (1999). John Glenn: A
memoir, Bantam Books, New
York.
Neufeld, M. (2007). Von Braun:
Dreamer of space, engineer of war,
Knopf, New York.
Ordway, F., and Stuhlinger, E.
(1994). Wernher von Braun:
Crusader for space, Krieger
Publishing, Melbourne, FL.
Von Braun, W. (1963). “My faith.”
American Weekly (Feb. 10).
Ward, B. (2005). Dr. Space: The life
of Wernher von Braun, Naval In-
stitute Press, Annapolis, MD.
Richard G. Weingardt is
chairman of Richard Weingardt
Consultants, Inc., Denver, Col-
orado. His latest ASCE Press
book, Empire Man, is about
Homer Gage Balcom, structural
engineer for the Empire State
Building. He can be contacted
at rweingardt@aol.com.

JANUARY 2012 36 Leadership and Management in Engineering

Leadership Manage. Eng., 2012, 12(1): 26-36