NASA career
Von Braun during Apollo 11 launch
The
U.S. Navy had been tasked with building a rocket to lift satellites into orbit, but the resulting
Vanguard rocket launch system was unreliable. In 1957, with the launch of
Sputnik 1, a growing belief within the United States existed that it was lagging behind the Soviet Union in the emerging
Space Race. American authorities then chose to use von Braun and his German team's experience with missiles to create an orbital launch vehicle. Wernher von Braun had such an idea originally proposed in 1954, but it was denied at the time.
[60]
NASA was established by law on July 29, 1958. One day later, the 50th Redstone rocket was successfully launched from
Johnston Atoll in the south Pacific as part of
Operation Hardtack I. Two years later, NASA opened the Marshall Space Flight Center at Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, and the
Army Ballistic Missile Agency (ABMA) development team led by von Braun was transferred to NASA. In a face-to-face meeting with
Herb York at the Pentagon, von Braun made it clear he would go to NASA only if development of the Saturn was allowed to continue.
[86] Presiding from July 1960 to February 1970, von Braun became the center's first director.
[citation needed]
Von Braun's early years at NASA were not without some disappointments. One of those was the "infamous four-inch flight" during which the first unmanned Mercury-Redstone rocket only rose a few inches before settling back onto the launch pad. The launch failure was later determined to be the result of a "power plug with one prong shorter than the other because a worker filed it to make it fit". Because of the difference in the length of one prong, the launch system detected the difference in the power disconnection as a "cut-off signal to the engine". The system stopped the launch, and the incident created a "nadir of morale in Project Mercury".
[citation needed]
After the flight of
Mercury-Redstone 2 in January 1961 experienced a string of problems, von Braun insisted on one more test before the Redstone could be deemed man-rated. His overly cautious nature brought about clashes with other people involved in the program, who argued that MR-2's technical issues were simple and had been resolved shortly after the flight. He overruled them, so a test mission involving a Redstone on a boilerplate capsule was flown successfully in March. Von Braun's stubbornness was blamed for the inability of the U.S. to launch a manned space mission before the Soviet Union, which ended up putting the first man in space the following month.
[citation needed]
Charles W. Mathews, von Braun,
George Mueller, and Lt. Gen.
Samuel C. Phillips in the Launch Control Center following the successful
Apollo 11 liftoff on July 16, 1969
The Marshall Center's first major program was the development of
Saturn rockets to carry heavy
payloads into and beyond
Earth orbit. From this, the
Apollo program for manned Moon flights was developed. Wernher von Braun initially pushed for a flight engineering concept that called for an
Earth orbit rendezvous technique (the approach he had argued for building his space station), but in 1962, he converted to the
lunar orbit rendezvous concept that was subsequently realized.
[87] During Apollo, he worked closely with former Peenemünde teammate,
Kurt H. Debus, the first director of the Kennedy Space Center. His dream to help mankind set foot on the
Moon became a reality on July 16, 1969, when a Marshall-developed
Saturn V rocket launched the crew of
Apollo 11 on its historic eight-day mission. Over the course of the program, Saturn V rockets enabled six teams of astronauts to reach the surface of the Moon.
During the late 1960s, von Braun was instrumental in the development of the
U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville. The desk from which he guided America's entry in the space race remains on display there. He also was instrumental in the launching of the experimental
Applications Technology Satellite. He travelled to
India and hoped that the program would be helpful for bringing a massive
educational television project to help the poorest people in that country.
[88][89]
During the local summer of 1966–67, von Braun participated in a field trip to
Antarctica, organized for him and several other members of top NASA management.
[90] The goal of the field trip was to determine whether the experience gained by U.S. scientific and technological community during the exploration of Antarctic wastelands would be useful for the manned exploration of space. Von Braun was mainly interested in management of the scientific effort on Antarctic research stations, logistics, habitation, and life support, and in using the barren Antarctic terrain like the glacial dry valleys to test the equipment that one day would be used to look for signs of life on Mars and other worlds.
In an internal memo dated January 16, 1969,
[91] von Braun had confirmed to his staff that he would stay on as a center director at Huntsville to head the
Apollo Applications Program. He referred to this time as a moment in his life when he felt the strong need to pray, stating "I certainly prayed a lot before and during the crucial Apollo flights".
[92] A few months later, on occasion of the first Moon landing, he publicly expressed his optimism that the Saturn V carrier system would continue to be developed, advocating manned missions to Mars in the 1980s.
[93]
Nonetheless, on March 1, 1970, von Braun and his family relocated to Washington, DC, when he was assigned the post of NASA's Deputy Associate Administrator for Planning at NASA Headquarters. After a series of conflicts associated with the truncation of the Apollo program, and facing severe budget constraints, von Braun retired from NASA on May 26, 1972. Not only had it become evident by this time that NASA and his visions for future U.S. space flight projects were incompatible, but also it was perhaps even more frustrating for him to see popular support for a continued presence of man in space wane dramatically once the goal to reach the Moon had been accomplished.
Von Braun and
William R. Lucas, the first and third Marshall Space Flight Center directors, viewing a
Spacelab model in 1974
Von Braun also developed the idea of a
Space Camp that would train children in fields of science and space technologies, as well as help their mental development much the same way sports camps aim at improving physical development.
[21]:354–355
Originally Posted by soul controller
Reply With Quote
Bookmarks