100 years ago today the smartest rocket scientist ever was born. Without him, the USA, and humans, never make it to the moon. He is basically like a boss. Check out the expression on his face standing in front of the best rocket ever constructed. 13 launches 0 failures Compared to the Russian N1 which had 4 launches and........4 failures. Huge Spoiler
Obviously I feel his masterpiece is the Saturn V rocket, but he also Made the V2 rocket which was the first long-range combat-ballistic missile. Made the Jupiter-C rocket which launched the first US artificial satellite Explorer I . Made the Redstone rocket, first large American ballistic missile. He was also a huge part of discovering the Van Allen belt but could not take any credit due to security concerns.
Why? because he helped design the satellite and rocket that took Van Allen's radiation belt experiments into outer space to confirm the existence of what Van Allen had been trying to prove for years? The payload of the rocket was Van Allen's experiment and equipment. Not sure how much credit, if any, should be given to the rocket scientist vs space physicist on this one. Besides, he did get enough credit to make the group photo of the Explorer 1 satellite
I think Von Braun was a great man but this is misleading to credit him with all of the successful Apollo launches and hail him as superior to the Soviet failures. Do you then blame Von Braun for the US initially falling behind the Soviets in the space race? Or for that matter do you hold Von Braun accountable for the Apollo disaster that killed Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee, or the Apollo 13 disaster? Von Braun was the leader and one of the more prominent faces of the space program but our's like the Soviets' was a collaboration of thousands of people where practically every job was critical to mission success.
Von Braun didn't design the Apollo command module and wasn't involved at all with that test on "Apollo 1". As for space exploration, I give all the credit to him for that. He was pushing for it long before the space race. The government just had other priorities.
well, this is misleading, too. The so-called "Space Race" didn't really begin until the Soviets surprised and embarrassed us with Sputnik. Von Braun's genius was not fully utilized and funded until then.
Never walk on the moon. If so how come we can't duplicate the event again with hd camera recording? Maybe we can fool the world back then but not today with modern technology that can call BS
The reason we walked on the moon is because we were in the middle of the Cold War and both the President and Congress thought the space program was important enough to fund a moon program. And yes, we would have made it to the moon without him. Maybe not by the end of the 1960's. but it would have happened.
