Word: rocketeers
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Techniques of Flimflam. Von Braun returned in 1931 to his little Berlin group, joyously helped launch 85 primitive rockets. As it happened, the German army was then looking for some sort of long-range weapons not banned by the Versailles Treaty-and it seemed just barely possible that rockets might be the answer. Captain Walter Dornberger, a boss of the embryonic program, watched some of Von Braun's rocket shoots and was impressed "by the energy and shrewdness with which this tall, fair young student with the broad, massive chin went to work, and by his astonishing theoretical knowledge...
Blood on the Walls. Reading an astronomy pamphlet in the mid-1920s Von Braun saw a drawing of a rocket streaking through space to the moon. It illustrated an article about Pioneer Rocket Theorist Hermann Oberth, now 63 and a consultant to Von Braun's Huntsville team, which venerates him as "The Old Gentleman." Von Braun sent away for a copy of Oberth's classic book, The Rocket to the Interplanetary Spaces, was shocked to discover that it contained mostly mathematical equations. Until then, Von Braun had disliked math, and indeed had flunked it in school. "But," says...
...Rocketeer Oberth's work had inspired many another young German rocket bug, most of them flirting dangerously with destruction as they pursued their untried hobby. Von Braun joined a small group firing rockets from an abandoned ammunition dump in suburban Berlin. When he left for a term at Zurich's Institute of Technology, he continued his experiments, built a contraption that spun mice in simulation of rocket takeoffs. Afterward, his roommate, an American medical student, dissected the mice, announced to Von Braun that the high acceleration caused cerebral hemorrhages. Their landlady had another kind of announcement: any more...
Adolf's Attention. At Peenemünde with its 250-mile rocket range, Germany's missiles went higher and higher, building steps into space. That was fine for Von Braun-but it was not yet the sort of military hardware that Germany wanted. World War II put on the pressure: Peenemünde must either produce a devastating military weapon or get out of business. Peenemünde's answer was the A-4 (standing for Aggregate-4, but later named V2, for Vengeance Weapon Two, by Hitler's gang). Its first test was a dismal...
...Attention. Von Braun returned to Peenemünde to rain V-2 ruin on London (when the first V-2 smashed London, Spaceman von Braun remarked to a friend that the rocket had worked perfectly except for landing on the wrong planet). But the war was already lost for Nazi Germany. Caught between the advancing Russian and U.S. armies, Von Braun and most of his tried, tested rocket team decided to go with the West. They fueled trucks with rocket alcohol and headed south. Von Braun had printed official-looking stickers with the mysterious letters VZBV-standing for some fictional...