Word: brauns
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...servicemen and civilian specialists along the whole broad front of U.S. missilery felt a new nearness to space as Explorer radioed back its readings (see SCIENCE). And of the legions of scientists, generals, admirals, engineers and administrators at work on missiles and man-made moons, German-born Wernher von Braun, 45, best personified man's accelerating drive to rise above the planet. Von Braun, in fact, has only one interest: the conquest of space, which he calls man's greatest venture. To pursue his lifelong dream, he has helped Adolf Hitler wage a vengeful new kind...
...robust (5 ft. 11 in., 185 Ibs.), hearty man with a booming laugh and a frank manner, he can be both ruthless and devious in his striving for space. To some, Von Braun's transfer of loyalty from Nazi Germany to the U.S. seemed to come too fast, too easy. Von Braun's critics say he is more salesman than scientist; actually, he learned through the bitterest experience that his space dreams had to be sold ("I have to be a two-headed monster-scientist and public-relations man"). Others claim that the onetime boy wonder of rocketry...
Says Germany's veteran Rocketeer Rolf Engel, who has known Von Braun since 1928: "He is a human leader whose eyes and thoughts have always been turned toward the stars. It would be foolish to assign rocketry success to one person totally. Components must necessarily be the work of many minds; so must successive stages of development. But because Wernher von Braun joins technical ability, passionate optimism, immense experience and uncanny organizing ability in the elusive power to create a team, he is the greatest human element behind today's rocketry success...
Mother Knew Best. Von Braun's origins had deep earthly roots in Prussian Junkerdom. A Von Braun fought the Mongols at Liegnitz in 1245, and the family's aristocracy was certified by the centuries. Wernher was born in Wirsitz, East Prussia (now part of Poland), the middle son of Baron Magnus von Braun, the local state administrator. Today Wernher's older brother, Sigismund, is counselor at the German embassy in London; his younger brother, Magnus, is program-control manager of the Chrysler Corp.'s new missile division in Detroit. Last week in a comfortable Oberaudorf apartment...
Unquestionably, much of it came from Wernher's mother, an enthusiastic amateur astronomer ("Odd," says Wernher von Braun, "but few mothers are"), who pointed out to him the planets and constellations in Prussia's clear night skies. "For my confirmation," says Wernher von Braun, "I didn't get a watch and my first pair of long pants, like most Lutheran boys. I got a telescope. My mother thought it would make the best gift...