60 Fun Facts About Wernher Von Braun

Wernher von Braun was the chief architect of which rocket that carried Apollo astronauts to the Moon?

The super heavy-lift launcher gained its fifth first-stage engine because von Braun's conservative C-4 design had a crossbeam strong enough to take it.

Which World War II rocket did von Braun help design and co-develop at Peenemünde?

Its army designation was A-4; the propaganda name stood for Vergeltungswaffe 2, or Vengeance Weapon 2.

Von Braun's V-2 became the first artificial object to cross the Kármán line in which year?

The vertical test launch MW 18014 on 20 June 1944 crossed the 100 km boundary months before the first combat firing at England.

Under which secret program was von Braun brought to the United States after the war?

It was initially called Operation Overcast; about 1,600 German scientists, engineers and technicians came over under it.

Von Braun's rockets launched which satellite, America's first, in 1958?

It went up on 31 January 1958, after the Navy's Vanguard had embarrassingly failed on the pad.

Von Braun was the first director of which NASA centre?

It opened at Redstone Arsenal in Alabama in 1960, and he ran it until January 1970.

Von Braun was born in 1912 in Wirsitz, a town in which then-German province, now in Poland?

His father Magnus was a civil servant and conservative politician.

Von Braun's father Magnus held which cabinet post during the Weimar Republic?

He later served in the Weimar cabinet; von Braun's mother Emmy von Quistorp traced her ancestry to Philip III of France and Edward III of England.

After his Confirmation, von Braun's mother gave him which gift that sparked a passion for astronomy?

He also played cello and piano, took composition lessons and once wanted to be a composer.

The young von Braun took composition lessons from which German composer?

His few surviving youthful pieces are said to echo Hindemith's style; he could play Beethoven and Bach from memory.

Whose 1923 book By Rocket into Planetary Space did the teenage von Braun get at boarding school?

He later called Oberth the guiding star of his life and helped him write a book on liquid-propellant rockets in 1931.

As a teenager von Braun caused chaos on a crowded sidewalk by launching what?

He was inspired by the Opel-RAK rocket car craze, questioned by police and handed back to his father for punishment.

In 1930 von Braun joined the Verein für Raumschiffahrt, whose name translates as what?

He worked there on liquid-fuel motor tests with Willy Ley, Rudolf Nebel and Oberth.

Von Braun's real 1934 doctoral thesis on liquid-propellant rockets stayed classified until when?

The public version bore the deliberately dull title "About Combustion Tests"; the real one described the A2 rocket.

Which artillery captain arranged the Ordnance Department grant that started von Braun's army rocket work?

Dornberger remained his military superior throughout the V-2 years and later got him released from Gestapo custody.

Which peace settlement's 'curious oversight' in not banning rocketry did Norman Davies credit for von Braun's career?

Germany was barred from most heavy weapons but not from rockets, so the army poured money into them.

Von Braun applied to join the Nazi Party in which year, two years earlier than he later told the U.S. Army?

His 1947 affidavit said 1939; historian Michael Neufeld found no evidence he did more than pay monthly dues.

By June 1943 Himmler had promoted von Braun to which SS rank?

He claimed the promotions were technical and arrived by mail, and that he wore the uniform only once; a former SS officer disputed that in 2002.

The first successful launch of an A-4 rocket, later called the V-2, took place in which year?

Hitler ordered it into production as a vengeance weapon that December, aimed at London.

Which American physicist's published research did von Braun draw on for the Aggregat rocket series?

Goddard reportedly recognised his own components in a crashed V-2 sent to his Annapolis lab in 1944.

After a 1943 colour film of an A-4 launch, an enthusiastic Hitler personally made von Braun what?

His loyal Germans went on calling him "Herr Professor" even in Texas, where a 26-year-old major called him Wernher.

RAF Bomber Command's August 1943 raid on Peenemünde was codenamed what?

596 aircraft dropped 1,800 tons of explosives, killing engine designer Walter Thiel but leaving most of the team unharmed.

The first combat V-2 was launched toward England in which month of 1944?

It came only 21 months after the project was officially commissioned; the V-1 flying bomb had begun three months earlier.

Roughly how many people died building V-2 rockets, compared with about 9,000 killed by them as a weapon?

Concentration-camp prisoners assembled them at the underground Mittelwerk; more died making the rocket than were killed by it.

The Mittelwerk V-2 factory drew its slave labour from which concentration camp, where about 20,000 died?

Von Braun admitted visiting the plant 12 to 15 times and called conditions "repulsive," but denied ever visiting the camp itself.

In March 1944 the Gestapo arrested von Braun and held him for two weeks in a cell in which city?

An SS spy, a young dentist, had reported him saying he would rather be building a spaceship and that the war was going badly.

Which Reichsminister persuaded Hitler to reinstate von Braun after his Gestapo arrest?

Speer's memoirs say Hitler agreed von Braun was to be protected from prosecution "as long as he is indispensable."

Where did von Braun order the V-2 blueprints hidden from the SS in early 1945?

U.S. counter-intelligence recovered 14 tons of documents from the Harz mountains near Goslar by mid-May.

In March 1945 von Braun broke his left arm and shoulder how?

He insisted on a cast so he could leave hospital; a month later the bones had to be rebroken and reset.

On 2 May 1945, who cycled up to an American private to say the V-2's inventor wanted to surrender?

The team had chosen the Americans over the Soviets and slipped away from SS guards ordered to shoot them.

Von Braun's name topped which code-named US list of German scientists to interrogate first?

He was debriefed at the "Dustbin" centre at Kransberg Castle, where British scientists reportedly got to him first.

Von Braun's team was first stationed at Fort Bliss, near which Texas city?

They refurbished and launched captured V-2s at White Sands and were not allowed off the base without a military escort.

Unable to leave Fort Bliss without escort, von Braun's Germans jokingly called themselves what?

A 1946 newspaper story about a team member calling American cooking tasteless exposed their presence and drew criticism from Einstein.

In 1950 von Braun's team moved to which Alabama city, his home for the next 20 years?

The move came at the start of the Korean War; the Von Braun Center arena there is named for him.

Von Braun's Jupiter-C was the basis for which rocket that orbited America's first satellite?

The launch on 31 January 1958 is often called the birth of America's space program.

Von Braun's 1952 magazine series "Man Will Conquer Space Soon!" appeared in which publication?

Chesley Bonestell's paintings illustrated it, and the wheel-shaped station later inspired 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Von Braun's proposed space station was a rotating toroid with what diameter?

It would spin for artificial gravity in a two-hour orbit and serve as an assembly platform for lunar expeditions.

How many publishers rejected von Braun's science-fiction novel about a Mars mission set in 1980?

Project Mars: A Technical Tale finally appeared as a printed book in December 2006.

Von Braun's first Disney television film, broadcast in March 1955, was titled what?

It drew 40 million viewers and was followed by Man and the Moon and Mars and Beyond.

Von Braun's 1947 marriage to Maria Luise von Quistorp raised eyebrows partly because she was his what?

He was 35 and she 18; they married in a Lutheran church in Landshut, Bavaria, and had three children.

Von Braun became a naturalised U.S. citizen in which year?

By then he was a television star through Disney and had already converted to evangelical Christianity in El Paso.

Before his 1946 conversion, von Braun's friends knew him by which nickname for his lack of religion?

A neighbour's invitation to a small white frame church in El Paso changed that; he later joined an Episcopal congregation.

On 21 November 1960 the first uncrewed Mercury-Redstone rose how far before settling back on the pad?

A power plug with one prong shorter than the other sent a cut-off signal; it became known as the "4 inch mission."

Von Braun's extra Redstone test in 1961 is blamed for the US losing the first-man-in-space race to whom?

The extra flight took the slot that might have sent an American up three weeks before the Soviet cosmonaut.

Which astronaut did von Braun's Mercury-Redstone 3 launch into space on 5 May 1961?

Shepard named the capsule Freedom 7; Glenn's orbital flight came the following February on an Atlas.

In 1962 von Braun dropped his plan to assemble the Moon ship near Earth in favour of which mission mode?

He had championed Earth-orbit assembly for years, but the switch let a single launch do the job.

Which former Peenemünde colleague became the first director of the Kennedy Space Center?

The two Germans worked closely together throughout Apollo, one building the rockets and the other launching them.

How many astronaut teams did von Braun's Moon rocket land on the lunar surface?

Apollo 13 never landed, and Apollo 8 and 10 only orbited; the last landing was Apollo 17 in December 1972.

Engineers at NASA headquarters mocked von Braun's heavily built designs by nicknaming Marshall what?

Krafft Ehricke likened his approach to building the Brooklyn Bridge; the redundancy paid off when a fifth engine was added to the C-4 design.

Von Braun's opposition to racial segregation put him in conflict with which Alabama governor?

He accused segregationist policies of obstructing Alabama's development, an unusual stance for a southern space scientist.

After leaving NASA in 1972, von Braun became a vice president at which aerospace company?

He worked from Germantown, Maryland, until failing health forced him to retire at the end of 1976.

Von Braun helped found and became first president of which advocacy organisation in 1975?

He also came up with the idea of a Space Camp to train children in science the way sports camps train athletes.

Which president awarded von Braun the National Medal of Science, which he was too ill to collect?

It was the 1975 medal, presented in early 1977 while he was hospitalised with cancer.

Von Braun died in June 1977 in Alexandria, Virginia, at what age?

His gravestone at Ivy Hill Cemetery quotes Psalm 19:1, "The heavens declare the glory of God."

Which 1964 Kubrick film character is usually held to be based at least partly on von Braun?

A satirist also skewered him in a 1965 song, and the 1960 biopic I Aim at the Stars earned the mock subtitle "But Sometimes I Hit London."

Which satirist wrote and performed the 1965 song "Wernher von Braun"?

Lehrer later included it on That Was The Year That Was; Mort Sahl supplied the joke about the biopic's subtitle instead.

Apollo director Sam Phillips eventually said that without von Braun the US would have done what?

He first said the U.S. would not have got there as quickly, then amended it after talking with colleagues.

Which actor played von Braun in the 1960 biopic I Aim at the Stars?

Satirist Mort Sahl famously suggested the title needed a subtitle: 'But Sometimes I Hit London'.

In which year was von Braun's novel Project Mars: A Technical Tale finally printed?

He had written it decades earlier, and its technical appendix was published long before the novel itself found a publisher.

Von Braun proposed a children's training program modelled on sports camps. What was it called?

He compared the concept to sports camps, arguing it would build young minds the way athletics build bodies.