Wernher Von Braun was a German-American scientist and lived between, March 23, 1912 till June 16, 1977. Through his love of science since a young age and his studies of aerospace engineering and space architecture, Von Braun was one of the most influential and important rocket developers though out his time.
In 1933 when Von Braun was creating his creative doctorate he received a research grant from Walter Dornberger, an artillery captain of the ‘Nazi Party’ which had recently come to power. And with is grant Von Braun completed his thesis entitled ‘About Combustion Tests’ to receive his doctorate in physics. However, at this time he had been secretly been working on another thesis entitled ‘Construction, Theoretical, and Experimental Solution to the Problem of the Liquid Propellant Rocket’ for the army. After time of writing his secret thesis for the army he had successfully managed to launch two rockets to heights of 3.5km. This first step brought Von Braun closer to his dream of space travel by advancing the ability of rockets at the time, with only a few, including him, truly understanding to true potential of rocketry. During this point Germany started to become highly interested
…show more content…
Von Braun wasn’t without problems and loses. Eventually von Braun’s dream came true with the development of the Saturn rockets which could carry heavy loads. This would lead to the launching of his Saturn V rocket which flew to crew of Apollo 11 to the moon. According to space.com the Saturn V rocket was “Taller than a 36-story building (363 feet / 111 meters), it was the largest, most powerful rocket ever launched. Powered by five engines in each of its first two stages, the rocket produced 7.5 million pounds of thrust at
With respect to the rocket program, the A1 rocket was first completed at the end of 1933. It was only 5 feet long and powered by an alcohol and liquid oxygen motor. Gener...
The development of the V weapons were extremely important to the Nazi regime. In 1941 the United States entered the war; the Germans felt right away that they were outmatched in the weapons category. The Nazi’s could not produce enough weapons, and the weapons they did produce were not extremely powerful. This is when the Nazi leader and Germany’s chancellor Adolph Hitler decided that the only way to compete and beat the Allies was to make new and innovative weapons. Now the “Vergeltungswaffen” or “weapons of revenge” were now made a priority by the Nazi’s. The weapons of revenge were named the V-1 and V-2. Germany’s Air Force started to develop the V-1 “flying bomb”, while the Army took to the V-2 rocket bomb (Sheehan). To make these advanced weapons work a lot of testing would be needed. The earltesting took place at Kummersdorf, which is about 27...
"The successful explosion of a Teller-inspired thermonuclear device in 1952 gave" the U.S. the go ahead blow against the Soviet Union in the arms race of the fifties (Teller and Ulam). Scientists around the world had been thinking that a thermonuclear bomb, also know as the Hydrogen Bomb, could be developed, but they arms race was completely focused on the atomic bomb. Oppenheimer was a household name because he was the head scientist at Los Alamos while developing the atomic bomb, after that had been completed the tide shifted to a man who’s name is Edward Teller. Teller, who is a “Hungarian-born atomic physicist” and “know as the "father" of the hydrogen bomb”, was at the forefront when it came to the design of the Teller-Ulam Hydrogen Bomb (Hydrogen Bomb Exploded). Stanislaw Marcin Ulam, mathematician who developed idea of the lithium hydride bomb, was the other half that perfect combination. Although there was excitement for the U.S. being the first with the bomb some scientists did not share that excitement.
One thing that helped build a space rocket was a V-2 rocket built by the Germans during WWII. Throughout the years the V-2 rocket turned into the Saturn V rocket. The Saturn V was a rocket NASA built to send people to the moon. The Saturn V rocket was 363 feet tall and about the height of a 36-story-tall building. The Saturn V that launched the Skylab space station only had two stages. The Saturn V rockets used for the Apollo missions had three stages. Each stage would burn its engines until it was out of fuel and would then separate from the rocket and then the next one will start. If it wasn’t for the V-2 and German scientist, von Braun the USA would probably have not traveled to space. The USA sent astronaut John Glent to circle the Earth in 1962 to retaliate the launching of Sputnik. In 1969, a milestone was reached when the USA sent astronaut Neil Armstrong to the moon. The technology on the ship that took Neil to space was equivalent to a basic calculator built in 1980. They took a 64Kb computer (the moon lander) with them to space. It had approximately 64...
It all started with the “Hungarian conspiracy” it had everyone convinced that the creation of a nuclear bomb possible, but that the German government was already doing research in this field of study and on such a weapon. To the rest of the world, the thought of Adolf Hitler might be the first to gain control of a weapon this destructiveness would be terrifying to the United States. Right, then they decided that the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt must be warned about the dangers and that the United States must begin its research department.As the planned gave way, Einstein was to write a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt about the possibilities and dangers of the atomic weapons, and later was taken to the president.Einsteins appointment was easy to get in te late summer of 1939. Hitler had just invaded Poland .and the war had just begun in Europe.After speaking with the President, he gathered his cabinet. and wanted to speak with his chief aide, after talking with him a small committee was set up called ...
In 1949, the U.S. was shocked when the U.S.S.R. was able to successfully reproduce a nuclear missile, when, the U.S. had been carefully guarding the plans for the missiles. The missiles continued to improve when, in January of 1950 a German theoretical physicist named Klaus...
About a month after that a man named Klaus Fuchs, a German physicist, was arrested for giving the Soviet Union secretive information to help them develop the atomic bomb. During World War II, Fuchs was positioned at the U.S. atomic development headquarters. Fuchs was giving the USSR information about the U.S. program, including the blueprint for the atomic bomb known as the “Fat Man”, that was later dropped in Japan. He also told them about everything the Los Alamos scientist knew involving the hypothesized hydrogen weapon.
Robert Hutchings Goddard was a futurist. He was born in Worcester, Massachusetts on October 5, 1882. He was the son of a machinist and his father was known for his brilliance with machinery and tools. The Goddard’s moved from Worcester to Boston while Robert was just an infant, because his father went in half and half on a local machine tools shop. In Boston, is where the young Robert Goddard spent his youth as an only child, and most of his younger years were spent alone at home due to his mother’s illness with tuberculosis.
allowed humans to see individual atoms. Binnig and Rohrer both worked as physicists for the
On January 31st, 1950. President Harry S. Truman announces his decision for the development of the hydrogen bomb. The hydrogen bomb was theorized to be way more powerful then the atomic bombs that were dropped on Japan during World War II. Five months earlier, America lost their powerful nuclear supremacy to the Soviet Union, due to the country successfully detonating an atomic bomb at their test site in Kazakhstan. Several weeks later, Britain and the U.S. intelligence came to the conclusion that German-born Klaus Fuchs, a top ranking scientists in the U.S. nuclear program, was a spy for the Soviet Union. With the collection of these events, Truman approved the massive funding for the superpower race to complete the world’s first “superbomb”.
“Early in 1939, The worlds scientific community discovered that German physicists had learned the secrets of splitting the uranium atom and word spread quickly and several countries began to duplicate the experiment.” Albert Einstein warned President Roosevelt that Germany may have already built an atomic bomb. Roosevelt did not see an urgency for such a project, but agreed to proceed slowly. In 1941, British scientists pushed America to develop an atomic weapon. America’s effort was slow until 1942 when Colonel Leslie Groves took over. He quickly chose personnel, production sites and set schedules to invent the atomic
In the early 1900’s, scientists learned that they had the ability to produce nuclear energy (Anderson 4). Though, throughout the early 1900’s how to produce this energy was still puzzling to most scientists. Leo Szilard, a Jewish man fleeing from Germany in 1933 figured out that colliding a neutron with a nucleus would start the chain reaction needed to produce massive amounts of energy. Then, this energy could be channeled into a weapon that could wipe out an entire city. Szilard was afraid that his new nuclear research might get into the wrong hands. Eventually, he turned to another German scientist that was known around the world, Albert Einstein. Einstein agreed that this research in the grasp of Germany could mean the end of days. Finally, they decided it was best to give it to a strong ally power, the United States (Anderson 12-17).
Von Braun, Wernher & Fredrick I. Ordway III. History of Rocketry & Space Travel. (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1975
1938 discovery of nuclear fission, Germany had a two-year head start on developing nuclear energy. The Americans' fear was that the Nazis would shape it into a weapon of mass destruction. Germany also had in its grasp two materials critical to its development, heavy water and uranium. They were available in abundance only in Norway and Czechoslovakia, both under Nazi control.
In 1939, the scientific world had discovered that Germany was building an atomic bomb. Albert Einstein had fled german prosecution earlier in his life. Upon hearing of Germany’s knowledge of splitting an uranium atom, he felt he must inform President Roosevelt about this. Roosevelt didn’t see the need in the atomic bomb but agreed to it anying. The code name for the atomic bomb was The Manhattan Project. Columbia University, the University of California at Berkeley, and the University of Chicago started the research for the atomic bomb. Enrico Fermi led a group of physicists to create the first controlled nuclear chain reaction underneath Stagg Field. Stagg Field was the University of Chicago’s football field. Here is where the first controlled