Read Online Dreams of Earth and Sky by Freeman Dyson - Free Book Online
Authors: Freeman Dyson
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that needs sunshine, fertile soil, and some gardener’s tending.” He told Himmler that “by pouring a big jet of liquid manure on that little flower, in order to have it grow faster, he might kill it.” His reason for refusing the invitation was probably concern for the welfare of his beloved rockets rather than concern for the welfare of the Dora prisoners. Still it took courage to refuse an invitation from Himmler. It took even more courage to compare the help offered by the chief of the SS to a load of shit.
“One month later, the pay-off came, Himmler-style,” von Braun reported in his memoir. Gestapo agents knocked on his door in the middle of the night and took him to a prison cell in Stettin on the Baltic coast in present-day Poland. After a week in the cell, he was given a hearing before three SS officers and formally accused of sabotaging rocket development, making defeatist remarks about the war, and planning to fly to England with all the plans for the V-2. Meanwhile, with the help of the armaments minister Albert Speer, who was a personal friend both of von Braun and of Hitler, Dornberger succeeded in obtaining a piece of paper signed at the Führer’s headquarters, releasing von Braun provisionally for three months. Von Braun sat in jail for only ten days and was not physically abused. Those ten days were of enormous value to him when he came to the United States. Whenever people asked him about his past, he could mention those days as evidence that he had not been a Nazi. He never claimed that he had actively resisted the Nazi regime, but the storyof his imprisonment made him appear to have been a victim of the Nazis rather than an accessory to their crimes.
The second half of Neufeld’s book describes von Braun’s life in America after 1945. He adapted with astonishing speed to the American way of life. In 1946 he became a born-again Christian and joined the congregation of a small Church of the Nazarene in Texas. For several years he worked patiently for the army, refurbishing surplus V-2 rockets that the US had imported from Germany. The army could not give him more interesting work because there was no money for further development of rockets. He quickly understood that in America the money was controlled by Congress and Congress was controlled by public opinion. The money was lacking because the public was not interested in rocketry. So he resolved to go directly to the public.
Whenever he had the chance, first with magazine articles and then with speeches on radio and television, he preached the gospel of rocketry. He spoke not only about unmanned rockets to defend the country but about manned rockets to explore the solar system. It took him only seven years from his arrival in the United States to become world-famous as the chief promoter of space travel. In 1952,
Collier’s
magazine published a flamboyant article with pictures of winged spaceships in orbit and a text, “Crossing the Last Frontier,” by von Braun. In the next year his book
The Mars Project
, with detailed specification of rocket weights and payloads required for a manned exploration of Mars, was published in English and in German. As his fame grew, so did the budgets for the army rocket program at Huntsville.
There were two high points of von Braun’s life in America. In 1958, after the Soviet Union launched Sputnik and the US Navy Vanguard satellite crashed ignominiously on its launchpad, von Braun’s team at Huntsville successfully put
Explorer 1
, the first Americansatellite, into orbit. In 1969, he watched Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walk on the moon, carried there by his rockets and fulfilling his dream of the human race moving out of the nursery. Von Braun was unique as an organizer of big projects who could persuade prima donnas to work harmoniously together, and who also understood every detail of the hardware.
After 1969, he remained as busy as ever, but his hopes for going on to Mars faded. Five more Apollo
“One month later, the pay-off came, Himmler-style,” von Braun reported in his memoir. Gestapo agents knocked on his door in the middle of the night and took him to a prison cell in Stettin on the Baltic coast in present-day Poland. After a week in the cell, he was given a hearing before three SS officers and formally accused of sabotaging rocket development, making defeatist remarks about the war, and planning to fly to England with all the plans for the V-2. Meanwhile, with the help of the armaments minister Albert Speer, who was a personal friend both of von Braun and of Hitler, Dornberger succeeded in obtaining a piece of paper signed at the Führer’s headquarters, releasing von Braun provisionally for three months. Von Braun sat in jail for only ten days and was not physically abused. Those ten days were of enormous value to him when he came to the United States. Whenever people asked him about his past, he could mention those days as evidence that he had not been a Nazi. He never claimed that he had actively resisted the Nazi regime, but the storyof his imprisonment made him appear to have been a victim of the Nazis rather than an accessory to their crimes.
The second half of Neufeld’s book describes von Braun’s life in America after 1945. He adapted with astonishing speed to the American way of life. In 1946 he became a born-again Christian and joined the congregation of a small Church of the Nazarene in Texas. For several years he worked patiently for the army, refurbishing surplus V-2 rockets that the US had imported from Germany. The army could not give him more interesting work because there was no money for further development of rockets. He quickly understood that in America the money was controlled by Congress and Congress was controlled by public opinion. The money was lacking because the public was not interested in rocketry. So he resolved to go directly to the public.
Whenever he had the chance, first with magazine articles and then with speeches on radio and television, he preached the gospel of rocketry. He spoke not only about unmanned rockets to defend the country but about manned rockets to explore the solar system. It took him only seven years from his arrival in the United States to become world-famous as the chief promoter of space travel. In 1952,
Collier’s
magazine published a flamboyant article with pictures of winged spaceships in orbit and a text, “Crossing the Last Frontier,” by von Braun. In the next year his book
The Mars Project
, with detailed specification of rocket weights and payloads required for a manned exploration of Mars, was published in English and in German. As his fame grew, so did the budgets for the army rocket program at Huntsville.
There were two high points of von Braun’s life in America. In 1958, after the Soviet Union launched Sputnik and the US Navy Vanguard satellite crashed ignominiously on its launchpad, von Braun’s team at Huntsville successfully put
Explorer 1
, the first Americansatellite, into orbit. In 1969, he watched Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walk on the moon, carried there by his rockets and fulfilling his dream of the human race moving out of the nursery. Von Braun was unique as an organizer of big projects who could persuade prima donnas to work harmoniously together, and who also understood every detail of the hardware.
After 1969, he remained as busy as ever, but his hopes for going on to Mars faded. Five more Apollo
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