Word: dreaming
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Shirtsleeved, tousled, and bright-eyed with the dream that gave Germany its V-2 and the U.S. its first orbiting satellite, bull-shouldered Wernher von Braun paced the yellow-walled office in Building 4488, nerve center of the Army Ballistic Missile Agency at Huntsville, Ala. Already on his cluttered mahogany desk last week was a new satellite assignment: preparing a Jupiter-C to power Explorer II into space late this month. More work was on the way; called by the telecommunications room, Space Engineer von Braun hurried down the hall, talked to Defense Department Missile Director William Holaday in Washington...
...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 of war, has argued against bureaucracy in two languages and campaigned against official apathy and public disbelief on two continents through most of his adult years...
...from the beginning," says Walter Dornberger, now technical assistant to the president of Bell Aircraft in Buffalo, "was to reach infinite space." But if Wernher von Braun had any notions about the German army's spending millions to achieve his dream of space exploration, they were quickly dispelled. Germany wanted weapons, period. The Budget Bureau would not even permit Kummersdorf to buy office equipment, and Von Braun learned early in the game the techniques of flimflamming the bureaucrats, e.g., it was a rare budget official who realized that Kummersdorf's request for funds to buy an "appliance...
...Dignified?" Once it had them, the U.S. hardly knew what to do with the German rocketeers. The world was again at peace, and no Congressman in his right mind would appropriate money for missilery or for Von Braun's dream of space exploration. Von Braun and his men, lonely and discouraged, were set down at Fort Bliss, Texas, left to tinker around, pretty much by themselves, with old V-25, moved no closer to space. The Korean war changed that: in 1950 the German scientists were rushed bag and baggage to Huntsville (see box) with orders to build...
...without exception, are old Peenemunde hands. Nearly all of them, including Von Braun, have become U.S. citizens. Nearly all could make more money in private industry, but they have refused to leave the job. Why? Because they are all enthusiasts, caught up in the space dream. Asks Wernher von Braun scornfully: "What corporation would have sent up a satellite two weeks...