Word: wernher
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...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." Result: in October 1932, Wernher von Braun, at 20, became the top civilian specialist for the German army's new (and only) rocket station at Kummersdorf, hidden in a pine forest south of Berlin...
...rocketry has become too conservative, e.g., a West Coast rocketeer says that Von Braun is wary of unproved new ideas, no matter how promising, and that he "still takes the conventional view that we should go into space with chemical rockets, with overgrown missiles of conventional design." To this, Wernher von Braun pleads guilty. "The more you're in this business," he says, "the more conservative you get. I've been in it long enough to be very conservative, to want to improve what we've got rather than begin by building what we haven...
...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...