After the three founding fathers of modern rocketry there came one man who was to be the driving force behind taking all this initial work and actually producing modern rockets. While Tsiolkovsky, Goddard and Oberth were the pioneers of this science and technology, it was Wernher von Braun who was to become the master.
Wernher von Braun's(1912-1977) Early SuccessesWernher von Braun had been working under Hermann Oberth in their liquid propelled rocket tests. During one of these test sessions he impressed some important military personal and was quickly recruited as the director for the German Military Rocket program in 1932.
| V2 Rocket Plan | V2 Rocket |
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| Courtesy: NASA | |
There was rapid progress under von Braun and by December of
1934 the first successful tests of the A2 rockets were carried
out and 2 years later as the A3 rocket was in final planning work
began on the soon to be famous A4 rocket (it became known as the
infamous V2).
Full testing of the A4 rocket began in March of 1941, this was
followed with the first successful ballistic rocket launch on 3
October 1942. It was the A4's third official test and the rocket
hit a pin point target 120 miles away.
As history tells us the V2 arrived too late to effect the
outcome of the Second World War, despite the death and
destruction the rockets caused.
At the end of World War 2 von Braun and his team fled to the US
after Hitler announced that all such scientists be found and
executed to prevent interrogation. The Armament Ministry of
Berlin also ordered that all material from the project should be
destroyed, however with help from von Braun the US were able to
recover much of the A4 project including several A4 rockets, in
an operation code named 'operation paperclip'.
When von Braun arrived in the US he was amazed at Robert
Goddard's progress in his rocket development work, but von Braun
was stunned at the US government's lack of interest in Goddard's
work and von Braun set about increasing interest in rocketry.
February 1946 saw von Braun launch the first V2 rocket launched
in the US, the rocket performed well, with a flight of 244 miles
into space and attaining a top speed of 5510mph; and here the US
space program was born.
By the Early 1930's Oberth's work was influencing
investigation into liquid propelled rockets and Sergei Korolev
became the co-founder of the USSR rocketry organisation
GIRD.
His interest grew as he watched the testing of the V2's by von
Braun's team and he was inspired in his own pursuit of
rockets.
His own work was halted however, during the peak of Stalin's
purges in 1937-38 when he was thrown, alongside other prominent
aerospace engineers, into the Soviet prison system.
With World War 2 about to start for the USSR, Stalin was to
recognise how important these engineers could be and they were
retrieved to work on new weapons for the army, a system was set
up so Stalin could take advantage of the engineers that were in
jail.
At the end of the war Korolev was released from prison and made
Chief Constructor for the development of a long range ballistic
missile. Korolev's first work was to copy the design of the A4
with Soviet parts and name it the R1, which received it's test
launch in 1948.
By 1953 he was preparing for first launch of the R-11, a successor to the R1, when on 1 April he received approval from the Council of Ministers for the development of the world's first intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), the R-7. It is fair to say that this effectively marked the start of the USSR's space program and Korolev is credited with being the founder of the program, becoming the USSR chief designer of space craft. To date he is still responsible for the design of every craft that has taken a cosmonaut into space (Vostok, Voshhod and Soyuz).
| The R-1 | R-7 initial design | R-7 development |
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| All 3 images: © Mark Wade | ||
So with the US and the USSR space programs underway it became a race to reach space, the US verses the USSR, Wernher von Braun verses Sergei Korolev.
X-15It is also worth noting the
significant contribution that was made by the rocket powered
research planes, in particular the X-15.
Check out our research plane page).
When President Harry Truman ordered troops into South Korea,
von Braun and his team were ordered to construct new weapons.
They built the first US ballistic missile, known as Redstone,
which was first tested in August 1953 at Cape Canaveral,
Florida.
When it came to the race to put an artificial satellite into
orbit the government decided that they did not want to use the
Redstone because of its military history and so the Navy was
asked to develop a new rocket to achieve the goal. In the end
public humiliation resulted for the US when on the 12 June 1957
the Navy's new rocket, the Vanguard, blew up on its launch
pad.
| The Redstone | The Vanguard Explosion |
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| Courtesy: MSFC | Courtesy: NASA |
Meanwhile Korolev had continued to develop the R7ICBM since
1953 and 3 and a half months later the US' misery was complete
when on 4 October 1957 the world was stunned as the Soviet R7ICBM
launched Sputnik 1, the world's first artificial satellite, into
orbit.
The US stepped up its own space program, but the humiliation
continued for the US when on 3 November 1957 Sputnik 2 took the
first organism (a dog named Laika) into space.
| The Jupiter C | Explorer 1 |
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| Courtesy: MSFC | Courtesy: JPL |
Finally the US turned back to Wernher von Braun and asked him to put the satellite into space. 84 days later on 31 January 1958 the Jupiter C, derived from Redstone, launched Explorer 1 into orbit.
The US shocked by being so comprehensively beaten in the race
for space established NASA in 1958, but the USSR continued to
succeed in space while the US struggled to catch up.
In 1959 Lunik 2 became the first man made object to reach the
moon, and later that year Lunik 3 took pictures of the far side
of the moon, a region that had never had human eyes gaze upon it
before.
The US then decided to use von Braun's talents more directly in
their space program and moved him and his team into NASA in 1960,
where the Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) was established, with its
directive to develop rockets for space exploration.
von Braun was to serve as the first director of the MSFC from
1960 to 1970.
| Vostok 1 Launch - R-7 derived launch vehicle |
Vostok 1 Spacecraft | |
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| Courtesy: NASA | source unknown |
Up until April 12 1961 the US had suffered humiliation after humiliation in the space race, but on this day they received a blow that shattered the last of their pride as Yuri Gagarin blasted off into space aboard Vostok 1 to become the first human being into space.
As the Marshall Space Flight Center started to operate at full potential Alan Sheppard became the first American in space on May 5 1961 (all be it a sub-orbital flight) and on Feb 20 1962 John Glenn, aboard Mercury 6, became the first American in orbit.
During the early 1960's Sergei Korolev began his campaign for the USSR to send a man to the moon and in 1961/2 came President Kennedy's famous speech:
'I believe this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to Earth. No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important in the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish.'
John F. Kennedy
Special Joint Session of Congress
May 25, 1961
Immediately the Marshall Space Flight Center, under the direction of von Braun, began the development of the soon to be famous Saturn V rockets while elsewhere in NASA development of the Apollo Command Service Module and the Apollo Lunar Module began.
| Saturn V Test | The Apollo CSM | The Apollo Lunar Module |
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| All 3 images Courtesy: NASA | ||
In 1962, following Kennedy's speech to the American people,
the USSR responded by commissioning Korolev to build the N-1
launch vehicle to send a Soviet cosmonaut to the moon.
Sergei Korolev, however, was to die in a botched operation in
1966 and this tragedy together with the fact that there was not
to be a final agreement of the full plan for a Soviet to reach
the moon until Feb 1967 left the USSR a long way behind in the
race for the moon.
By this time the US had spent 6 years developing the Apollo Command Service Module and the Lunar Module, and the Saturn V rockets and were on course for the completion of the Apollo program, by the end of the 1960's.
| Apollo 11 Launch | Apollo 11 in Flight |
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| Both images Courtesy: NASA | |
After 8 years of development accompanied by many test flights
(unmanned and manned, testing all the systems including Apollo 8
and Apollo 10 that actually orbited the Moon), July 16 1969 saw
the launch of Apollo 11, the first formal attempt by man to land
on the moon.
On July 20 1969 came the words 'the eagle has landed' and Neil
Armstrong became the first man to walk on the surface of another
planetary body.
Although they had lost to the USSR in the space race consistently from the late 50's and into the early 60's, the Apollo program changed this, finally the US had got its act together, made a collective decision with the Apollo program and led by von Braun they had won the final, most important battle in the space race.
The US was not finished though, Apollo 12 through 17 were
launched to the moon, with only Apollo 13 failing to land on the
Moon, after the famous problems on board (even more famous since
Tom Hanks' film!).
After the final mission, Apollo 17 (launched Dec 7 1972) a total
of 12 Americans had walked on the Moon, a large amount of lunar
samples had been brought back to the Earth (384.2kg) and
scientists had an incredible amount of new data to analyse, so
much more was known about the moon, but of course not all
questions had been answered and to this day no one has ever
returned to the Moon.
We will go back?
Probably!
The USSR program continued until 1971 but the N-1 was never to make a successful flight. While the Soviet program has been quietly forgotten, Sergei Korolev will be always remembered as the man who masterminded the historic launches of the first intercontinental ballistic missile as well as Sputnik 1 and of course Vostok 1, carrying Gagarin. He will be most remembered most, however, as the man who actually achieved the milestone of turning rockets from military weapons to instruments of space exploration.
An interesting point to note is that the second world war had a massive impact on the future of humans in space. Clearly the development of rocketry was pushed along by the war but also had Germany won the war, von Braun would possibly never have left for the US. The result could then have been that Germany would have become the first nation in space and perhaps even dominated the space race and become the first to reach the moon.
If you would like to read more information on the space race, www.space.com host 5 excellent articles by Andrew Chaikin (Editor, Space & Science) that explore the greatest space events in the last 5 decades of the 20th century. For the space race you will need to look at the 50's (here) and the 60's (here).