Read Online Apollo: The Race to the Moon by Charles Murray, Catherine Bly Cox - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Charles Murray, Catherine Bly Cox
Tags: Science & Math, Technology, Aeronautics & Astronautics, Engineering, Aeronautical Engineering, Astronomy & Space Science
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from the beginning. The Germans were delighted to be out of the arid Southwest and in a wooded, hilly area that reminded many of them of the German countryside. The Alabamians were intrigued by these foreigners and entertained by their eccentricities. The assimilation was extraordinarily fast. By 1952, only two years after the Germans had arrived in Huntsville, former Luftwaffe sergeant Walter Wiesman was president of the Huntsville Junior Chamber of Commerce, elected by a membership that was 70 percent World War II veterans (“So am I!” Wiesman pointed out). As time went on, Huntsville became intensely proud of its Germans, and especially of its most famous German of all, Wernher von Braun.
Von Braun was the only non-astronaut in the space program who became a household name. In Congress, his prestige was enormous. Movie-star handsome, with an expansive smile and European charm to which he added a touch of Alabama folksiness, he could dominate a congressional hearing as easily as he dominated the media. Other senior people in NASA envied him and in some cases resented him (“That damned Nazi,” one was known to mutter when he had had several drinks), intimating that von Braun spent too much time worrying about his public image and that the real work at Marshall was done by others. What was hard for some of his NASA peers to swallow was that von Braun was a natural. He was exceptionally good at being a public person, and none of the other engineers of Apollo could compete.
With the fame came a price. In some circles, von Braun was assumed to be a Nazi who had escaped judgment only because of his value to the United States. In fact, his history reveals a man whose passion from his teens was rockets and space travel, a man as oblivious to politics during the 1930s as America’s Apollo engineers were oblivious to politics during the 1960s. During the height of the war, von Braun was briefly jailed by the Gestapo for insufficient ardor in making weapons. But even among those who bore him no ill will, jokes were inevitable, given the contrast between von Braun’s activities during the war and his transformation into an American hero. When a movie about von Braun was entitled I Aim at the Stars, the underground version of the title quickly became I Aim at the Stars but Sometimes I Hit London.*
[* It was an awkward situation to which the Germans remained sensitive long after they had become naturalized American citizens. During the early years of racial integration, an American engineer once overheard someone asking Hans Gruene, head of Launch Vehicle Operations at the Cape, how he felt about having a black live on his block. “I have no problem,” Gruene replied. “I wonder what he thinks of an ex-Nazi living on his.” By that time, many of the Germans had become more American than the Americans. Ray Clark, Kurt Debus’s deputy for administration at the Cape, recalled gatherings after work at which Gruene and Debus would get into conversations about America’s heritage and its future that more than once went on until dawn—they knew more about the United States than he did, Clark often thought.]
Von Braun was not a creative genius—to that extent, the public image misrepresented him. It is not possible to think of “von Braun concepts” that changed the development of rocketry in the same way that “Faget concepts” changed the development of spacecraft. Instead, he was a natural leader and technical manager. Karl Heimburg, chief of the Testing Lab, explained how von Braun went around looking for new ideas, which he would then take to his associates. Heimburg would listen unimpressed and explain to von Braun why something wouldn’t work. And then Heimburg would find himself saying, “But we could do it in this other way,” and an innovation that he had not considered would have opened up before him.
In general, von Braun seems by the testimony of people who worked for him, ranging from senior colleagues to
Von Braun was the only non-astronaut in the space program who became a household name. In Congress, his prestige was enormous. Movie-star handsome, with an expansive smile and European charm to which he added a touch of Alabama folksiness, he could dominate a congressional hearing as easily as he dominated the media. Other senior people in NASA envied him and in some cases resented him (“That damned Nazi,” one was known to mutter when he had had several drinks), intimating that von Braun spent too much time worrying about his public image and that the real work at Marshall was done by others. What was hard for some of his NASA peers to swallow was that von Braun was a natural. He was exceptionally good at being a public person, and none of the other engineers of Apollo could compete.
With the fame came a price. In some circles, von Braun was assumed to be a Nazi who had escaped judgment only because of his value to the United States. In fact, his history reveals a man whose passion from his teens was rockets and space travel, a man as oblivious to politics during the 1930s as America’s Apollo engineers were oblivious to politics during the 1960s. During the height of the war, von Braun was briefly jailed by the Gestapo for insufficient ardor in making weapons. But even among those who bore him no ill will, jokes were inevitable, given the contrast between von Braun’s activities during the war and his transformation into an American hero. When a movie about von Braun was entitled I Aim at the Stars, the underground version of the title quickly became I Aim at the Stars but Sometimes I Hit London.*
[* It was an awkward situation to which the Germans remained sensitive long after they had become naturalized American citizens. During the early years of racial integration, an American engineer once overheard someone asking Hans Gruene, head of Launch Vehicle Operations at the Cape, how he felt about having a black live on his block. “I have no problem,” Gruene replied. “I wonder what he thinks of an ex-Nazi living on his.” By that time, many of the Germans had become more American than the Americans. Ray Clark, Kurt Debus’s deputy for administration at the Cape, recalled gatherings after work at which Gruene and Debus would get into conversations about America’s heritage and its future that more than once went on until dawn—they knew more about the United States than he did, Clark often thought.]
Von Braun was not a creative genius—to that extent, the public image misrepresented him. It is not possible to think of “von Braun concepts” that changed the development of rocketry in the same way that “Faget concepts” changed the development of spacecraft. Instead, he was a natural leader and technical manager. Karl Heimburg, chief of the Testing Lab, explained how von Braun went around looking for new ideas, which he would then take to his associates. Heimburg would listen unimpressed and explain to von Braun why something wouldn’t work. And then Heimburg would find himself saying, “But we could do it in this other way,” and an innovation that he had not considered would have opened up before him.
In general, von Braun seems by the testimony of people who worked for him, ranging from senior colleagues to
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