Brown is a scientist. Wernher von Braun - American "Korolev" or the new "retribution" of Nazism? Former opponents - new allies

Physics (1934)

Werner Magnus Maximilian Freiherr von Braun(it. Wernher Magnus Maximilian Freiherr von Braun; March 23, Virzitz, Posen province, Prussia - June 16, Alexandria, Virginia, USA) - German, and since the year - an American designer of rocket and space technology, one of the founders of modern rocketry, the creator of the first ballistic missiles, a member of the NSDAP since 1937, Sturmbannführer SS (1943-1945). In the United States, he is considered the "father" of the American space program.

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Biography

Wernher von Braun was born in the town of Wierzitz in the Posen province of the then German Empire (now Wyrzysk in Poland). He was the second of three sons in a family that belonged to an aristocratic family, and inherited the title "freiherr" (corresponding to the baronial). His father, Magnus von Braun (1878-1972), was the Minister of Food and Agriculture in the government of the Weimar Republic. His mother, Emmi von Quistorp (1886-1959), had both lineages of ancestry going back to royal families. Werner had a younger brother who was also named Magnus von Braun. For confirmation, the mother gave the future rocket engineer a telescope, which gave him an impetus to his passion for astronomy.

After the First World War, Wierzitz was transferred to Poland, and his family, like many other German families, left for Germany. The von Brauns settled in Berlin, where 12-year-old Werner, inspired by Max Valier and Fritz von Opel's speed records in rocket-powered cars, caused great confusion on a crowded street by blowing up a toy car to which he attached many firecrackers. The little inventor was taken to the police and kept there until his father came to the police station for him.

Von Braun was an amateur musician, received an appropriate education, could play the works of Bach and Beethoven from memory. He learned to play the violin and piano from an early age and initially dreamed of becoming a composer. He took lessons from Paul Hindemith, the famous German composer. Several of von Braun's youthful writings have survived, and they all resemble those of Hindemith.

In 1930 he began working on liquid-fueled rockets in Germany. In 1932 he was admitted to the Dornberger military missile research group. In 1932-1933, at a training ground near Kummersdorf, he launched several missiles at an altitude of 2000-2500 meters.

Work on V-2 in Nazi Germany

Werner von Braun was working on his dissertation when Hitler and the NSDAP came to power in 1933. Rocketry almost immediately became an important issue on the agenda. Artillery captain Walter Dornberger, who actually oversaw the development of missiles in the Reichswehr, arranged for Brown to be awarded a research grant from the artillery department. Since then, Brown has worked alongside the existing Kummersdorf Dornberger Test Site for solid-propellant rockets. He was awarded a Ph.D. in physics (rocket science) on July 25, 1934 from the University of Berlin for his work entitled "On Experiments on Combustion," and was curated by the German physicist Erich Schumann. But this was only an open part of his work, a complete dissertation, dated April 16, 1934, entitled "Constructive, theoretical and experimental approaches to the problem of creating a rocket on liquid fuel." It was classified at the request of the army and was not published until 1960. By the end of 1934, his group had successfully launched two missiles that reached heights of 2.2 and 3.5 km.

At that time, the Germans were extremely interested in the development of the American rocket physicist Robert Goddard. Until 1939, German scientists occasionally contacted Goddard directly to discuss technical issues. Werner von Braun used Goddard's schemes published in various magazines and combined them in the construction of the Aggregat (A) series of rockets. The A-4 rocket is better known as the V-2. In 1963, Brown, reflecting on the history of rocketry, said about Goddard's work: “His rockets ... by today's standards may seem very primitive, but they left a noticeable mark in development and already had many of the elements that are used in the most modern rockets and spaceships. ".

In 1944, shortly before the Nazis began bombing England with the V-2, Goddard confirmed that von Braun had used his work. The V-2 prototype flew to Sweden and crashed there. Some parts of the rocket were shipped to the United States, to the laboratory in Annapolis, where Goddard conducted research for the US Navy. Apparently, Goddard investigated the wreckage of the rocket, which on June 13, 1944, as a result of a technical error of the personnel, went on the wrong course and crashed near the Swedish town of Beckebu. The Swedish government exchanged the fragments of an unknown missile to the British for Spitfire fighters. Only a fraction of the debris got into Annapolis. Goddard recognized the parts of the rocket that he had invented and concluded that the fruit of his labors had been turned into a weapon.

Since the VFR's Space Travel Society ceased operations in 1933, there have been no rocket associations in Germany, and the new Nazi regime has banned civilian rocket science. Only the military was allowed to build missiles, and a huge missile center was built for their needs (German. Heeresversuchsanstalt Peenemunde) in the village of Peenemünde in northern Germany, on the Baltic Sea. This site was chosen in part on the recommendation of von Braun's mother, who remembered that her father loved to hunt ducks in the area. Dornberger became military director of the training ground, and Brown became technical director. In collaboration with the Luftwaffe, the Peenemünde center developed liquid-fueled rocket engines as well as jet boosters for aircraft. They also developed the A-4 long-range ballistic missile and the Wasserfall supersonic anti-aircraft missile.

After the war, explaining why he became a member of the NSDAP, Brown wrote:

“I was officially asked to join the National Socialist Party. At that time (1937) I was already the technical director of the military missile center in Peenemünde ... My refusal to join the party would mean that I had to give up my life's work. So I decided to join. My membership in the party did not mean for me participation in any political activity ... In the spring of 1940 SS Standartenfuehrer Müller came to me in Peenemünde and informed me that SS Reichsfuehrer Heinrich Himmler had sent him with an order to convince me to join the SS. I immediately called my military commander ... Major General W. Dornberger. He answered me that ... if I want to continue our joint work, then I have no choice but to agree. "

This assertion of Brown is disputed by some biographers because in 1940 the Waffen-SS did not yet show any interest in the work carried out at Peenemünde. It is also disputed that people with the von Braun position were pushed to join the NSDAP and the SS. Commenting on a photo of him posing in an SS uniform behind Himmler, Brown said that he only wore the uniform for the occasion. However, in 2002, Ernst Kütbach, a former SS officer in Peenemünde, told the BBC that von Braun regularly appeared at official events in SS uniform. Initially, von Braun received the rank of Untersturmführer, later Himmler promoted him three times, most recently in June 1943 to SS Sturmbannführer. Brown stated that this was an automatic promotion, which he received in the mail every year.

By then, the British and Soviet intelligence services were aware of the missile program and the development team at Peenemünde. On the night of 17-18 August 1943, the British bomber aircraft conducted Operation Hydra. 596 aircraft headed for Peenemünde and dropped 1,800 tons of bombs on the missile center. Nevertheless, both the center itself and the main group of developers survived. But the raid killed engine designer Walter Thiel and chief engineer Walther, delaying the German missile program.

The first combat A-4, renamed V-2 for propaganda purposes (Vergeltungswaffe 2 - "Retaliation Weapon 2"), was launched across the UK on September 7, 1944, just 21 months after the project was officially adopted.

Helmut Walter's experiments with hydrogen peroxide rockets, conducted at the same time, led to the creation of light and simple Walter jet engines, convenient for installation on an aircraft. Helmut Walter's company in Kiel was also commissioned by the Reich Air Ministry to create a rocket engine for the He 112. And in Neuhardenberg, two different rocket engines were tested: a von Braun engine running on ethyl alcohol and liquid oxygen and a Walter engine running on hydrogen peroxide and calcium permanganate as a catalyst. In the von Braun engine, the jet stream was created as a result of direct combustion of fuel, and in the Walter engine, a chemical reaction was used in which a hot steam was generated. Both engines provided thrust and high speed. Subsequent flights in the He 112 took place on the Walter engine. It was more reliable, easier to control and posed less danger to both the pilot and the aircraft.

Use of slave labor

On August 15, 1944, Brown wrote a letter to Albin Sawatzki, who was in charge of V-2 production, in which he agreed to personally select workers from the Buchenwald concentration camp who, he allegedly admitted in an interview 25 years later, were in a "terrible state."

In the book "Wernher von Braun: Knight of the Space" (eng. Wernher von Braun: Crusader for Space) Brown repeatedly claims that he was aware of the workers' conditions, but felt completely unable to change them. His friend quotes von Braun's words on his visit to Mittelwerk:

It was creepy. My first impulse was to talk to one of the SS guards, to which I heard a harsh reply that I should go about my business or I risk being in the same striped prison uniform! ... I realized that any attempt to refer to the principles of humanity would be completely useless.

P. 44 English edition

When Brown's teammate Konrad Dannenberg was asked in an interview with The Huntsville Times if von Braun could protest against the abysmal conditions of the forced laborers, he replied, "If he did, I think he could have been shot on the spot."

Others accused von Braun of taking part in or allowing such inhuman treatment. Guy Morand, a French Resistance member who was a prisoner in the Dora concentration camp, testified in 1995 that after an apparent attempt to sabotage:

Without even listening to my explanations, (von Braun) ordered Meister to give me 25 punches ... Then, deciding that the punches were not strong enough, he ordered me to be whipped more brutally ... von Braun ordered me to transfer that I deserve the worst that I really deserve to be hanged ... I believe that his cruelty, which I personally fell victim to, was an eloquent testimony to his Nazi fanaticism.

Biddle, Wayne. Dark side of the moon(W.W. Norton, 2009) pp. 124-125.

Another French prisoner, Robert Cazabonne, claimed to have witnessed von Braun stand and watch the prisoners being hanged from hoist chains. Brown himself stated that he "never saw any ill-treatment or murder" and only "there were rumors ... that some of the prisoners were hanged in underground galleries."

Arrest and release under the Nazis

According to the French historian André Selye, who passed through the Dora-Mittelbau concentration camp, Himmler received von Braun in February 1944 at his Hochwald headquarters in East Prussia. To strengthen his position in the hierarchy of Nazi power, Heinrich Himmler conspired to take control of all German weapons programs with the help of Kammler, including the development of the V-2 at Peenemünde. Therefore, Himmler advised Brown to work more closely with Kammler on V-2 problems. However, according to von Braun himself, he replied that the problems with the V-2 are purely technical and he is confident that he will solve them with the help of Dornberger.

Apparently, von Braun from October 1943 was under the supervision of the SD. Once a report was received about how he and his colleagues Klaus Riedel and Helmut Grettrup in the evening at the engineer's house expressed regret that they were not working on the spacecraft and they all believed that the war was not going well. This was regarded as "defeatist sentiment." These statements were reported by a young female dentist who was also an SS agent. Together with Himmler's false accusations of von Braun's sympathy for the Communists and his alleged attempts to sabotage the V-2 program, and considering that Brown had a pilot's diploma and regularly flew on a government-provided plane and thus could have escaped to England - all this was the reason for the arrest of von Braun by the Gestapo.

Not expecting anything bad, Brown was arrested on March 14 or 15, 1944 and was thrown into the Gestapo prison in Stettin. He spent two weeks there, not knowing what he was accused of. Only with the help of the Abwehr in Berlin was Dornberger able to secure von Braun's conditional release, and Albert Speer, Reich Minister of Armaments and War Industry, convinced Hitler to reinstate Brown so that the V-2 program could continue. Speer, quoting in his memoirs "Führerprotokoll" (Hitler's meeting minutes) of May 13, 1944, writes that Hitler said at the end of the conversation: "As for B., I guarantee you that he will be exempted from persecution until you will need it, in spite of the general difficulties that may follow. "

Surrender to the Americans

In March, while on a business trip, Brown broke his left arm and shoulder due to the fact that his chauffeur fell asleep at the wheel. The fracture was complicated, but Brown insisted that he be put in a plaster cast so that he could no longer stay in the hospital. The designer underestimated the injury, the bone began to heal incorrectly, a month later he had to go to the hospital again, where his arm was broken again and a new bandage was applied.

In April, the Allied forces penetrated deep enough into Germany. Kammler ordered the scientific team to board the train and travel to Oberammergau in the Bavarian Alps. Here they were under the close protection of the SS, which was ordered to eliminate all missilemen if they were threatened with hitting the enemy. However, von Braun was able to convince SS Major Kummer to disperse the group to nearby villages so as not to become an easy target for American bombers.

On May 2, 1945, spotting an American soldier from the 44th Infantry Division, Werner's brother and fellow rocket engineer Magnus caught up with him on his bicycle and told him in broken English: “My name is Magnus von Braun. My brother invented the V-2. We want to surrender. " After his capture, Brown told the press:

“We know that we have created a new means of warfare and now the moral choice - which nation, which victorious people we want to entrust our offspring - is more acute for us than ever before. We want the world not to get caught up in a conflict like the one Germany has just gone through. We believe that only by handing over such weapons to those people who are instructed on the path by the Bible, we can be sure that the world is protected in the best way. "

High-ranking officials in the United States were well aware of the valuable booty they had in their hands: von Braun's surname topped the Black List, the codename for a list of German scientists and engineers among those whom American military experts would like to interrogate as soon as possible. On July 19, 1945, two days before the planned transfer of territory to the Soviet occupation zone, U.S. Army Major Robert B. Stever, Jet Propulsion Chief of the U.S. Army Artillery Corps' Research and Intelligence Service in London, and Lt. Col. R.L. Williams imprisoned von Braun and heads of its departments in a jeep and taken from Garmisch to Munich. Then the group was airlifted to Nordhausen, and the next day - 60 km south-west, to the town of Witzenhausen, located in the American zone of occupation. Von Braun lingered briefly at the Dustbin interrogation center, where British and American intelligence services interrogated the economics, science and technology elite of the Third Reich. He was initially recruited to work in the United States under the Operation Overcast program, later known as Operation Paperclip.

Career in the USA

US Army

Post-war time

Despite the attention to space flights that the US authorities began to pay after the USSR launched the first artificial Earth satellite (AES) in 1957, the first person in space in 1961 was again not an American. The flight of Yuri Alekseevich Gagarin was the reason for the proclamation of John F. Kennedy's keynote speech, in which he stated that for the prestige of the nation it was necessary to ensure the landing of an American astronaut on the moon before 1970. Wernher von Braun became the head of the US lunar program.

Since 1970 - NASA's deputy director for manned space flight planning, since 1972 he worked in industry as vice president of Fairchild Space Industries in Germantown, Maryland.

His projects of the lunar station were not destined to be realized in connection with the curtailment of the struggle between the two powers (the USA and the USSR) for the prevalence in the exploration of the Moon. The results of his work became a powerful basis for the conquest of space by other designers of rocket technology.

Death

After leaving NASA in 1972, he lived only five years and died of

Braun, Wernher von (1912-1977), German and American scientist and rocket designer. Born March 23, 1912 in Wierzice in Germany (now Wyzhisk, Poland).

In 1932 he received a bachelor's degree from the Berlin Institute of Technology, and in 1934 - a doctorate from the University of Berlin. Carried away by the idea of ​​a flight to Mars, from 1929 he took an active part in the work of the Society for Interplanetary Communications in Berlin.

Pure science is what I do when I don’t know what I’m doing.

Brown werner background

In 1932 he was admitted to the Artillery Directorate of the German Armed Forces, where he directed work on the creation of liquid-propellant ballistic projectiles.

In 1937 he became one of the leaders of the German Military Missile Research Center on the island of Peenemünde in the Baltic Sea. Chief designer of the V-2 rocket (V-2).

On May 3, 1945, von Braun and most of his employees surrendered to the US occupation authorities. Upon arrival in the United States, von Braun headed the US Army's Armaments Design and Development Service, then headed the Guided Missile Division of the Redstone Army Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama.

In 1960 he became one of the leaders of NASA and the first director of the Space Flight Center. Marshall in Huntsville. Under his leadership, a launch vehicle of the Saturn series for manned flights to the Moon, artificial earth satellites of the Explorer series and the Apollo spacecraft were developed. Von Braun subsequently became vice president of Fairchild Space Industries in Germantown, Maryland, which he left shortly before his death.

Werner von Braun - photo

Wernher von Braun - quotes

A person's place is where he wants to go.

Nature knows no extinction; she knows only transformation. Everything that science has taught me and teaches me to this day strengthens my faith in the continuation of our spiritual existence after death.

Werner Magnus Maximilian Freiherr von Braun, NSDAP member since 1937, SS Sturmbannführer.
A key figure in the legends of the United States that 12 American biological beings in spacesuits unsurpassed since then (the secret of making is lost) played golf on the Moon, where they arrived on an unrivaled spaceship since then (the secret of making is lost).
Born in 1912 in Poland (then it was Germany), died in 1977 in the USA.
Freiherr, if anything, is a baronial title.

Father - Minister of Food and Agriculture in the government of the Weimar Republic (a very short time, six months, and much later than inflation).
Mom is already on both lines of ancestors - royal blood.
Little Werner dreamed of becoming a composer, but did not grow together, and from about 1930 he began to deal with rockets. It was then that Hitler arrived, who, apparently, already then fully understood what rocketry was - the Nazi regime banned civil experiments in rocketry, and von Braun received grants, a training ground, a Ph.D. , and in 1934 he already launched the first rocket at an altitude of 3.5 km.
Together with the Luftwaffe, the young promising scientist is developing liquid-fuel rocket engines, jet boosters for aircraft, the A-4 long-range ballistic missile, and the Wasserfall supersonic anti-aircraft missile.
In 1936 - the first, not entirely successful, flight of an airplane on a jet engine.
Since 1937, von Braun was the technical director of the German rocket research center in Peenemünde and the chief designer of the A-4 (V-2) rocket, which was used in World War II to shell France, Great Britain, Holland and Belgium.
Either in December 1932, or in November 1933, or in November 1937 (data are different), von Braun, of course, joins the NSDAP. There are documents that he entered the SS school on November 1, 1933, and then, on May 1, 1937, in the National Socialist Party, and from May 1940 until the very end of the war he was an SS officer.
Von Braun received the rank of Untersturmführer, Himmler himself then promoted him three times in rank. The last time was in June 1943 before the SS Sturmbannfuehrer.
In December 1942, Hitler signed an order for the production of A-4 missiles as a "weapon of retaliation", setting London as a target for the developers.
After Brown showed a color film showing the takeoff of the A-4 in July 1943, Hitler was delighted and personally awarded him the title of professor. For Germany and for that time, it was completely exclusive. Brown is 31 years old.
By that time, British and Soviet intelligence already knew about the missile program at Peenemünde. Such great importance was attached to this that on the night of August 17-18, 1943, British bomber aviation carried out a special operation "Hydra": 596 aircraft dropped 1,800 tons of bombs on the von Braun missile center. Nevertheless, both the center itself and the main group of developers survived.
The first combat A-4, renamed V-2 for propaganda purposes (Vergeltungswaffe 2 - "Retaliation Weapon 2"), was launched across the UK on September 7, 1944, just 21 months after the project was officially adopted.
At that time, there was already a shortage of labor, and slave labor of concentration camp prisoners was used. Subsequently, it turned out that during the construction of the V-2 rockets more people died than died from the use of this rocket as a weapon. Von Braun selects the slaves himself - there is his correspondence with the consent to personally participate, for example, in the selection of prisoners from Buchenwald.
Here is the testimony of one of them:

Without even listening to my explanations, (von Braun) ordered Meister to give me 25 punches ... Then, deciding that the punches were not strong enough, he ordered me to be whipped more brutally ... von Braun ordered me to transfer that I deserve the worst that I really deserve to be hanged ... I believe that his cruelty, which I personally fell victim to, was an eloquent testimony to his Nazi fanaticism. - Biddle, Wayne. Dark Side of the Moon (W.W. Norton, 2009) pp. 124-125.

Another inmate claimed that von Braun stood and watched as the inmates were hanged from the chains of hoists. (Brown himself after the war, of course, swore by his mother that he "never saw any abuse or murder" and only "there were rumors ... that some of the prisoners were hanged in underground galleries.")
In March 1944, after being informed about the words "it is a pity that the war is going wrong", he was sent to the Gestapo for two weeks. Hitler personally frees the valuable staff.
In the spring of 1945, von Braun gathered his development team and asked them to decide how and to whom they should all surrender. It was decided to surrender to the Americans.
He falsifies documents and sends 500 people to where he estimates they will be captured by US troops. Von Braun hides the basic blueprints for the missiles in an abandoned mine.
Well, then, as you know, everything grew together, on June 20, 1945, the US Secretary of State approved the move of von Braun and his staff to America, until October 1, 1945, this was not announced openly - they were preparing fake biographies.

His career in the United States before the launch of the Soviet satellite was not particularly impressive - well, he developed rockets.
Everything was developed.
But then the events began fabulous.
The beginning was something like this: he was allowed to launch his fully finished Juno, but only after a test launch of the Navy's rocket.
Which rose exactly one meter.
Thus, the von Braun satellite was launched with a delay of a year, but it got rid of the US Navy as a direct competitor for good and came out on top.
And here the US space program, which was created by the Germans, began. Absolutely everything. Only the Germans. They were in all the more or less significant leadership positions.
I will not retell in detail, since within the framework of von Braun's story, the most interesting thing is the question:
- von Braun got into a mess with his F-1, and so NASA willy-nilly was forced to fly in Kubrick's studio,
or
- von Braun deliberately sabotaged the project, and NASA willy-nilly was forced to conduct flights in Kubrick's studio?
There are some circumstantial arguments for each of these options, but the facts clearly say: even starting with Gemini, absolutely the entire US space program is Photoshop.
Everyone involved in the project knew this.
And the US government knew it.
As for von Braun himself, his role is sad.
And they treated him (after it became clear to everyone that the F-1 was crap) was clearly piggy.
For example, can we imagine that Korolev, in the midst of the next stage of the space race, was suddenly pulled from his place and sent on a long (more than one month) business trip to the Arctic?
Nonsense, of course.
And here is von Braun, the chief US specialist in rocketry, in 1966-1967. sent to Antarctica.
No justification.
The official reasons were funny: the study of logistics and the problems of human acclimatization in the harsh Antarctic conditions close to space.
In general, nonsense.
The main version of the skeptics: as punishment for the failure of von Braun, as the last negro cleaner, they were sent to collect lunar meteorites - since the decision was made that it was easier to take beautiful pictures than to fly to the moon, then it was necessary to prepare to present the moon stones to the world.
And in 1972, von Braun, even before the official completion of NASA's lunar program, had already been sent into some completely inglorious retirement.
There are no reasons for this (in the light of the official enthusiastic recognition by the whole world that the US lunar victory is the highest achievement of mankind), and there cannot be any at all.

ps
Oddly enough, Wikipedia has a phrase like this: according to B.E. Chertok, the activities of W. Brown contributed to the defeat of Germany in the Second World War.

Ernst Werner von Siemens (German Werner von Siemens, a more accurate version of the transcription of the surname: Siemens; December 13, 1816 - December 6, 1892) - a famous German engineer, inventor, corresponding member of St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences, industrialist, founder of Siemens, public and political activist.

Ernst Werner von Siemens (1816-1892)

Werner Siemens was born on December 13, 1816 in Lente near Hanover. He was 4 children out of 14 in the family of the farmer Christian-Ferdinand Siemens and his wife.

Study and service in the army

After graduating with honors from the Catharineum gymnasium in Lübeck, then the artillery engineering school in Magdeburg, he serves as a lieutenant in the artillery workshops in Berlin, where he is engaged in invention and scientific experiments.

After the death of his parents, 24-year-old Werner remains the eldest in a family of ten brothers and sisters.

In 1845, he became one of the most prominent young scientists in the newly formed Physical Society, and the very next year he was sent to the General Staff Commission to prepare for the introduction of electrical telegraphy. In a letter dated December 14, 1846, Werner Siemens informs his relatives: "I have now almost decided to choose a permanent career in telegraphy ... Telegraphy will become an important branch of technology in its own right, and I feel called upon to play the role of organizer in it."

Start of commercial activity

On October 1, 1847, together with the mechanic Halske, he founded the telegraph and construction company Telegraphenbauanstalt Siemens & Halske (S&H), which, in addition to electrical telegraphy, was engaged in a wide range of works in the field of precision mechanics and optics, as well as the creation of electromedical devices. In 1849 S&H built the first telegraph line in Germany from Berlin to Frankfurt am Main.

For one of the sections of the main overhead line, an underground cable with gutta-percha insulation was used, applied using a press invented by Siemens. At the same time, Werner proposed to tighten the cable into lead pipes.

He also improved the Wheatstone-Cook pointer telegraph, for which he was awarded one of the highest awards at the First International Industrial Exhibition in England (1851).

Since 1853 S&H has been building a number of telegraph lines in Russia, connecting St. Petersburg with Kronstadt, Helsingfors, Warsaw, Riga, Revel and taking over their maintenance.

Siemens, combining scientific research and inventive activity with experimental and design developments, introduced new products into production and improved the manufactured products - a feature that made this practical scientist related to Edison.

World recognition and great inventions

Siemens' report on electrical telegraphy at the Paris Academy of Sciences was highly praised by Humboldt and published on the recommendation of Arago. At the age of 35, Siemens joined the ranks of internationally recognized authorities in the field of electrical engineering. In 1860 the University of Berlin awarded him the title of Honorary Doctor of Philosophy.

In 1868-1870. S&H took part in the construction of the 11,000 km Indo-European Telegraph Line London - Calcutta. One of the sections of this line (across the Caucasus) was built on iron supports and operated from 1871 to 1931.

The beginning of Siemens' work in the field of high-current electrical engineering dates back to the second half of the 1860s. His most significant achievement in this area dates back to 1867, when he created the perfect design for a self-excited DC generator, long referred to as a dynamo. He also proposed a mercury resistance unit, later converted into ohms, and the name Siemens was assigned to the unit of electrical conductivity.

In the early 1870s, S&H built the cable ship Faraday, which was equipped with an advanced cable laying machine. In 1874, Faraday laid a transatlantic telegraph cable, directly connecting Ireland and the United States (5700 km), bypassing the island of Newfoundland. And in just 10 years, this ship has laid six transatlantic cables.

In July 1874 Siemens was admitted to the Prussian Academy of Sciences.

In 1877, S&H manufactured Bell's handsets, and in 1881 participated in the construction of the first telephone exchange in Berlin.

In 1877, a unique, perfectly preserved fossil of a fossil bird was discovered in shale dating back to the Late Jurassic period. The amateur geologist who found this paleontological rarity intended to sell it abroad, asking for a large sum of money for it. Hearing about this rarest find, Siemens immediately buys it, leaving it in Germany. Later he donates it to the Berlin Natural History Museum. The scientific name of the rarity Archeopteryx Simensii (Archeopteryx Siemens) still reminds us of this remarkable act of Werner Siemens.

Almost all of the success of Siemens businesses is due to the research and inventive ability of their manager. He rejected everything that was not comprehensively considered theoretically and confirmed by experiment.

The Siemens dynamo made a real revolution in mining, thanks to it, an electric breaker, an electric mine fan, an electric conveyor and, most importantly, an electric mine road appeared.

In 1879 Siemens & Halske presented the first electric railway at the Berlin Industrial Exhibition; in 1880 at the exhibition in Mannheim - the world's first electrolift; in 1881 she built the first electric tram line on the outskirts of Berlin; in 1882, the pilot operation of trackless transport began.

Siemens has done a lot for the development of German and European electrical engineering. He is the initiator of the formation of the Berlin Electrotechnical Union (1879), as well as the founder and chairman of the Patent Society in Berlin. And even the term electrical engineering was coined by Werner von Siemens, using it in 1879 in a letter to Heinrich von Stefan, General Postmaster of Germany (before that they used the term "applied theory of electricity").

In addition, Werner Siemens is known as a philanthropist in the field of science and culture: he donated 500 thousand marks for the creation of the Berlin National Physics and Technology Laboratory; thanks to his efforts and financial support, the Physico-Technical Institute was opened in Charlottenburg.

At the First International Electrotechnical Exhibition in Paris in 1881, the exhibits of Edison and Siemens were most successful. There, both luminaries of electrical engineering met and became friends.

In 1882 he was elected a corresponding member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. In 1888 Werner Siemens was elevated to the nobility and became Werner von Siemens.

Since 1889, Werner Siemens began a gradual departure from active participation in the affairs of the company, at this time in his company, including subsidiaries in London, St. Petersburg and Vienna, there were already 5,000 employees. On December 31, 1889 Siemens resigned from the management of the company.

In 1892, he invented steel tape armor to protect underground cables from mechanical stress.

At the end of his life, with his inherent gift of real foresight, Siemens pointed to the prospect of world trade and the economic unification of Europe:

"This can only happen by removing, if possible, all internal political customs barriers that limit sales areas, increase production costs and reduce competitiveness in the world market."

The article contains only the first photo,
the rest of the illustrations were added by me.

The article presents materials, including little-known ones, about the life and work of Wernher von Braun in Germany and the USA, the creator of the world's first long-range ballistic missile with LPRE - A-4 (V-2) and the heavy launch vehicle Saturn-V ", Which delivered American astronauts to the moon. The role of von Braun in the development of liquid-propellant rocket engines of these missiles, including the F-1 and J-2, the creation of the infrastructure of the rocket industry in Germany and the United States, in the propaganda of space flights, is shown, some features of von Braun as a person and as a general designer of rocket and missile space complexes.

Werner von Braun

There were actually much more missiles in his life, but two were the most important, epochal missiles of the twentieth century: the world's first "real" large long-range guided ballistic missile on liquid fuel A-4, aka V-2, which in 1944 The city hit London, Antwerp and other major cities of Western Europe, and the giant space launch vehicle Saturn V, which delivered American astronauts to the moon in 1969. Wernher von Braun, in our terminology, was the chief designer of these rockets. Fate wanted to divide his life into two approximately equal parts - "German" and "American", and it proceeded under the conditions of the most notorious totalitarian fascist regime, and the American regime of "freedom and democracy" in a society of equal opportunities. The regimes used it, it used the regimes, but each pursued its own goals.

2012 marked the 100th anniversary of the birth of Wernher von Braun, and the 35th anniversary of his passing away - a double informational occasion to remind of the man who made the 20th century the century of rocketry and astronautics.

How is it, and Sergei Pavlovich Korolev, the founder of practical cosmonautics, whose name is associated with such triumphs of the Soviet Union as the launch of the first artificial Earth satellite and the first manned flight into space?

Sergei Pavlovich Korolev in rocketry can de facto be considered the most talented student of the von Braun correspondence school, although Korolev himself never mentioned this anywhere, nor did his biographers write about it.

Not only Korolev - all Soviet chief designers of missile subsystems, incl. engines (V.P. Glushko) and control systems, ground vehicles - members of the first royal council of chief designers - are also, in fact, part-time students of the von Braun engineering school.

The first large liquid-propellant rockets of the OKB S.P. Korolev and his cooperation - "one" (R-1) - a copy of the V-2 domestically produced, "two" (R-2), "five" (R-5) - these are the successive upgrades of the Brownian rocket A-4. The engines of these missiles are modernization and boosting of the V-2 engine.

And only the main rocket of Korolev - the intercontinental "seven" (R-7) and its modifications with the new engines of V.P. Glushko allowed him to get ahead of von Braun at a certain time interval and to establish himself forever in the history of astronautics and world civilization in general.

Our rockets in defeated Germany.

3.5 years after the tragic death of Korolev, von Braun took revenge: under his leadership, a grandiose, extremely reliable "lunar" rocket "Saturn-V" was created. Von Braun did what, for various reasons, none of the Soviet chief designers managed to do - neither Korolev, nor Chelomey, nor Yangel. The launch of a satellite and a man into space after the USSR was repeated by other countries, but no one repeated the flight of the crew with landing on the moon and returning to Earth after the Americans. I have not repeated it yet, but more than 40 years have passed.

Vasily Pavlovich Mishin, associate and like-minded Korolev, his long-term first deputy, who headed the OKB after Korolev, a man who cannot be blamed for belittling Korolev's merits, in 2001 to the question of journalist and writer Vladimir Gubarev “Do you think Korolev is the main cosmic figure in the twentieth century? " replied: “I think that Werner von Braun should be named first. He began to use missiles for military purposes. He made them weapons. And before him, they were still "toys".

Wernher von Braun was born on March 23, 1912 in the Prussian town of Wierzitz (now the Polish town of Wyrzysk) into a noble aristocratic family of Baron Magnus von Braun and Baroness Emma von Braun, née von Quistorp. Werner was the second of the von Brauns' three sons.

Before school, Werner was raised mainly by his mother, from whom, according to his father's assurances, Brown inherited his abilities. Emma knew 6 European languages ​​and established a tradition in her family - to speak only one of them every day of the week. She also taught Werner good manners and playing the piano (then Paul Hindemith himself would become his teacher). The composing experiments of young Werner in the style of Hindemith have been preserved. Later, the cello was added to the piano. Werner never parted with music. His favorite composer was Bach. In his spare moment, the grown-up Werner willingly sat down at the piano, playing, as a rule, without notes.

In 1923 the family moved to Berlin and Werner was sent to a French gymnasium. He was not a diligent student, but he conceived and himself made a kind of rocket car from a cart on wheels for fruits and fireworks rockets, launching this device on the street, frightening neighbors. This was probably his first acquaintance with rockets. On his thirteenth birthday, my mother gave Werner a telescope, and he enjoyed looking at the starry sky and the moon.

In 1925, Werner came across a book that struck him, starting with the title. It was a book by one of the pioneers of rocketry, physicist Hermann Obert, "A Rocket Into Interplanetary Space", the first edition of which was published in 1923.

In the introduction, Obert wrote:

"1. With the current state of science and technology, it is possible to create machines that can rise above the limits of the earth's atmosphere.

2. With further development, these machines will be able to reach such speeds that they, presented to themselves in space, will not fall on the earth's surface and will even be able to leave the region of attraction of the Earth.

3. Such machines can be built in such a way that people (maybe even without harm to health) can fly on them.

4. Under certain economic conditions, the construction of such machines will be justified. Such conditions can be achieved in a few decades.

I would like to prove these four statements. " It was excitingly interesting. But as for the evidence, there are too many incomprehensible formulas and drawings.

Werner asks his school teacher: "What should be done to understand Obert's book?" You need to learn mathematics and physics properly.

At this time, Werner was by no means brilliant in his knowledge of these subjects.

In a couple of years he will become the best student in physics and mathematics. After all, he had a goal - to master Obert's book. In 1927 he knew her, as they say, close to the text. She became his guide to action.

February 15, 1927 "The German Youth Gazette" publishes the first article by a 15-year-old, no, not a captain, but a student "Voyage to the Moon: Astronomical and Technical Aspects". In the same year he wrote a letter to Obert: “... I know you believe in the future of missiles. Me too. That is why I take the liberty of sending you a small work on rocketry, which I recently wrote. " Aubert sent a reply: “Don't stop, young man. If you continue like this, you will surely become a capable engineer. "

In 1928, Werner's parents transferred to a boarding school near Weimar - an educational institution with stricter rules. Werner reads science fiction (Jules Verne, Wells) and popular science literature.

In 1930, Werner went to study at the Berlin University of Technology to become an engineer - the first engineer in the Brown family. In the same year, he met with Hermann Obert personally and Werner became his assistant, participating in the preparation of tests of the Obert "Kegelduse" liquid-propellant rocket engine, which ran on gasoline and liquid oxygen and developed a thrust of 7 kg. On June 23, 1930, after a series of successful launches, the engine was officially tested, which was also successful. The engine ran steadily for 45.6 seconds. Let us emphasize that the future rocket designer started out as an engine builder.

Later, von Braun wrote: “The experiments carried out by Obert in the late 1920s in Berlin that led to the creation of the Kegelduse, a liquid-propellant rocket engine, which was successfully demonstrated for the first time in 1930, were a new leap into the Unknown. They became the starting point for the development of rocketry in Germany. "

In 1932, von Braun passed his final examinations and received the title of aeronautical engineer. Werner understands that in order to build rockets, you need to get acquainted with technology in general. To this end, he is doing an internship at the Borziga locomotive plant in Berlin.

Werner understands that rocketing is expensive. Who can provide the necessary funds? The case helped to solve this problem. Once the passengers of a taxi, which was driven by 19-year-old Werner to replenish his student budget, were two officers, the subject of their conversation was ... missiles! Very tactfully, the driver made several remarks about the essence of the conversation, quite professional, followed by an invitation to appear for a conversation at the General Staff of the Ground Forces - one of the interlocutors was Captain Walter Dornberger, who was in charge of the army's missile program.

In Germany, weakened by the First World War and economic crises, the military turned their attention to missiles as a weapon, the development of which, unlike aviation and artillery, was not prohibited by the Treaty of Versailles.

The result of the meeting was a contract signed by von Braun with the military to work in the field of rocketry as a civilian civilian specialist at the artillery range in Kummersdorf near Berlin.

On November 1, 1932, Werner began work. Initially, his entire staff consisted of one mechanic. After becoming an employee of the test site, von Braun received, through Colonel Becker, who was in charge of the ballistics department at the university, a little financial support to carry out the experiments necessary for the dissertation on which he was working. As early as January 1933, Brown put on a test bench a water-cooled engine with a thrust of 140 kg. The tests were accompanied by explosions, fouling of valves, fires in cable trunks and other troubles. Brown, using the money from the military, attracts qualified consultants and places orders for individual engine parts at specialized enterprises.

A-2. Germany, 1933.

Together with the group of Walter Riedel von Braun, he is developing a project for an engine with a thrust of 300 kg, using liquid oxygen (oxidizer) and 75% alcohol as fuel - this pair was once proposed by Obert. The secret rocket with this engine was given the open name "Agregat-1", abbreviated - A-1. When attempting to launch, the rocket exploded. They immediately began to develop an improved version of the A-2 rocket, made two copies, which were jokingly called "Max" and "Moritz" after the names of the then popular comedians. In December 1934, these missiles were launched on Borkum Island and in the North Sea. The rockets, launched vertically, rose to an altitude of 2.3 km. This was the first success, though "not high". Dornberger spoke of the young von Braun in the following way: “I knew that as soon as he really got carried away with any technical issue, the answer would be found by the power of his undeniable genius. He had an almost incredible gift to extract from the mass of scientific data, information from the literature, discussions and visits to factories, the most important thing that was relevant to our work: he evaluated this information, scrolled it in his head and used it in the most necessary place. He forgot, or like useless rubbish, he threw out from his memory everything that had nothing to do with him.

When he clearly realized what he wanted to achieve, then he was possessed by stubbornness, rejecting any hints or deviations from the goal. And with indomitable persistence, in full steam, he moved along the course that he considered correct. "

At the end of 1934, 22-year-old Wernher von Braun successfully defended his thesis "Constructive, theoretical and experimental considerations for the problem of liquid-propellant rockets" and received a Phd - Doctor of Philosophy (this approximately corresponds to our PhD degree).

Von Braun's next missile is the A-3 at a range of 50 km. For her flight tests, the station at Kummersdorf is too small. At the end of 1935, on the advice of his mother, Werner von Braun chose a sparsely populated place for a new rocket range - the island of Usedom in the Baltic Sea, located near the fishing village of Peenemünde - where Werner's grandfather once hunted ducks. In 1936, von Braun managed to convince the Lufftwaffe command to buy out the land he had looked after for the landfill. The new secret missile range was named the Peenemünde Army Experimental Station. The range allowed for rocket firing at a maximum range of about 300 km, the flight trajectory passed over the sea. Peenemünde has become more than a training ground over time. It was the first and largest rocket center in the world. The construction of the center was carried out on a grand scale, about 3 years, military money was not spared. A camp for scientific and engineering personnel and a design bureau (block IV), factory workshops and laboratories, a plant for the production of liquid oxygen, a power plant, an airfield, the largest supersonic wind tunnel in Europe for blowing model missiles, built at the insistence of von Braun, was erected, more than 10 large test benches, incl. booth No. 7 for firing missiles, launch sites, barracks for workers, access roads - railway and highway. The result was a unique complex: in fact, a research institute, a design bureau, a plant and an experimental base were assembled on the same territory, including for flight tests of missiles. Brown was the technical leader and Dornberger was the military commander of the Peenemünde OST (Peenemünde West was under the Luftwaffe). The orders for the missile center were carried out by the largest companies in Germany. In 1937, von Braun and his co-workers moved to Peenemünde.

A-3 missiles were launched in the winter of 1937. All four flight tests turned out to be emergency due to failures in the control system. Already at the design stage of the A-3, Werner von Braun and Walter Riedel conceived a large combat missile, which became known as the A-4.

The terms of reference for the missile, issued by the commander-in-chief of the ground forces, prescribed the delivery of a warhead weighing 1 ton at a distance of up to 300 km. Estimates showed that the engine of such a rocket should have a thrust of about 25 tons. Von Braun, together with Riedel, sketches the layout of the rocket. 10 years after the start of theoretical research, the A-4 rocket had the following characteristics: length - 14 m, diameter - 1.65 m, stabilizer span - 3.55 m, launch weight - 12.9 tons, engine thrust - 25 tons (terrestrial), warhead weight - 1 ton, range - 275 km.

Werner von Braun was the first to attract professionals - scientists and engineers, specialized industrial enterprises, i.e. the diverse teams that Brown has brought together to achieve a common goal.

Scholars were recruited through the Imperial Research Council. All 30 institutes of the "Kaiser Wilhelm Society" (analogous to our Academy of Sciences) were puzzled, including the "German Research Institute for Rocket Navigation", the Hermann Goering Institute. These institutes have increased their staff 6 times within a few months.

A-4. Germany.

Von Braun's rocket program employed dozens of laboratories at industrial concerns, almost all technical research institutions and several specialized design bureaus of Nazi Germany, in 1939 4 thousand technical specialists were recalled from the active army and sent to work on the rocket program. And later, when the serial production of the A-4 rocket began, 800 military factories in Germany and from the European countries occupied by the Nazis were involved as subcontractors. There was a clear system of orders and supplies of components, even in war conditions.

The A-4 controlled BRDD with free vertical takeoff of the "Earth-to-Earth" class was intended to destroy area targets with predetermined coordinates. The rocket was equipped with an open-circuit LPRE designed by Dr. Walter Thiel on the fuel components alcohol (75%, from potatoes) - liquid oxygen with an unimaginable thrust of 25 tons at that time. The maximum thrust level existing at that time in the world was exceeded 17 times! It was a really big leap forward.

Von Braun was directly involved in the development of the engine, in particular, it was he who proposed to place 8 prechambers of the same type with oxidizer and fuel nozzles in two concentric circles on the engine head.

A-4. Germany.

The most important innovation in the A-4 rocket was the turbo pump unit (TNA) for feeding the propellants into the combustion chamber. “When von Braun laid out the requirements for pumps to the personnel of the plant that produces the pump, he involuntarily expected the objection that such requirements were impracticable. Instead, everyone listened in silence, and when the pump specialists started to speak, it turned out that the required pumps resemble one type of fire pump. Existing samples of centrifugal fire pumps were the basis for the design of rocket fuel pumps. "

The most difficult problem in the development of the A-4 rocket engine was the creation of the critical part of the jet nozzle - burnouts occurred there. Regenerative cooling with alcohol through the gap formed by the inner and outer shells of the pear-shaped combustion chambers was not enough. A way out of this situation was proposed by the engineer Pühlmann by creating a layer of relatively cold alcohol vapor between the incandescent jet of outflowing gases and the inner wall of the nozzle by injecting alcohol through special holes in the inner wall of the engine in the region of the critical section. The ignition of the cooled alcohol film was prevented by the lack of oxygen in this place. This cooling method has been called "film internal cooling". The engine had 4 curtain belts - the first is slightly above the critical section, and the rest are below. Since then, this technical solution has become a classic in rocket propulsion.

In 1940, firing tests of the combustion chamber of the A-4 rocket engine began. Development, research and testing at Peenemünde went hand in hand with construction. In 1937-1940. In fact, more than 550 million Reichsmarks were invested in the construction of the Peenemünde center - a huge amount at that time. "Equipping the center with the latest measuring equipment and special equipment was carried out by all leading electrical and radio engineering companies in Germany."

As B.E. Chertok, “... for all our anti-fascist mood, we must pay tribute to the energy and confidence, enthusiasm and organizational skills with which the military leader Dornberger and the technical leader Von Braun acted. They had a clear idea of ​​the scale of work to achieve their goals and the courage to create an unprecedented infrastructure. "

In 1943, the number of key personnel at Peenemünde was 15,000. The new stands made it possible to conduct fire tests of engines with thrust from 100 kg to 100 tons.

At the end of 1941, the first fire bench test of the A-4 rocket was carried out, in which, due to personnel error, an explosion occurred, the rocket and the stand were destroyed. In 1942, experimental launches began. The first successful launch of the rocket, the fourth in a row, took place on October 3, 1942. For the first time in the world, a rocket reached supersonic speed and touched the boundary of space, reaching an altitude of 90 km and flying 192 km. Obert himself, then at Peenemünde, congratulated von Braun and the developers. A large boulder was erected at the launch site with the inscription: “On October 3, 1942, this stone fell from my heart. Wernher von Braun ".

After the first successful launch, there will be many more launches - more emergency than normal. During the development process, 65 thousand changes will be made to the V-2 design to eliminate defects, but the missile was never brought to an acceptable level of reliability.

There will be a raid on Peenemünde by an armada of British bombers on the night of 17-18 August 1943. During the bombing, 735 people will be killed. Including the chief designer of the engine, Walter Thiel and his family, and von Braun will save the technical documentation from the burning KB building, endangering his life.

With perseverance and bitterness, the Germans in the conditions of war were able in a short time not to fully, but resume the work of Peenemünde; to build a huge underground plant "Mittelwerk" near Nordhausen and organize mass production of missiles there with a design capacity of 30 missiles per day, up to 600 per month. At the same time, the slave labor of foreign workers, prisoners of war, prisoners of concentration camps under the auspices of the SS was used; continue flight tests of the V-2 in Poland at the Blizna artillery range. In the spring of 1944, von Braun's life was put at risk for the second time when the engine was cut off prematurely and the rocket began to crash onto the launch pad where von Braun was, and he was saved when the rocket exploded in mid-air.

In September 1944 - V-2 rockets fired at London (more than 500 missiles), Antwerp, Paris with casualties and destruction. In London alone - 2,700 killed, 17,000 wounded, 26,000 destroyed houses (figures in German and English sources differ). The first military use of liquid-propellant missiles against civilians did not demoralize the British and could not change the course of World War II, as the leaders of the Third Reich hoped for. More people died in the production of V-2 missiles than from their combat use.

Peenemünde's technical director Werner von Braun will organize the evacuation of personnel and technical documentation (14 tons) to the south of Germany and, after Hitler's suicide, will decide on a voluntary surrender to the US Army. Soon, more than 100 of the best German specialists were shipped to the United States.

Later, as a result of the special operation Paperclip, the number of German specialists exceeded 785 people. Peenemünde's engineering thought worked until the evacuation. These are the projects of the long-range A-4 cruise missile and the world's first project of a two-stage intercontinental missile A-9 / A-10, intended for shelling the United States.

Of particular historical interest are the proposed options for basing the V-2 rocket, decades ahead of their time:

- fortified launch position - a prototype of a silo launcher;

- combat railway complex;

- "Sea Launch" from a transport and launch container (TPK), towed to the launch site by a series XXI submarine. The scheme of the missile in the TPK is surprisingly similar to the scheme of a modern silo launcher for a single launch. An option is also proposed for placing a TPK with a rocket on the deck of a submarine in a horizontal position, before launching the container was raised, and after the rocket took off, the boat could drop it.

In America, von Braun, working in the interests of the US Army, makes a successful upgrade of the V-2 - the reliable Redstone missile, the first American ballistic missile with an atomic warhead. The modification of this rocket became the first stage of the Jupiter-S launch vehicle, which in 1958 launched the first American satellite Explorer, weighing 13.9 kg, into orbit. Competition between the US Navy and the US Army has deprived von Braun of the opportunity to launch the Orbiter satellite weighing 2.9 kg. rocket "Redstone", with which he made in 1954. After the launch of the first American satellite, von Braun became an American celebrity (he received American citizenship in 1955).

On July 21, 1958, on the basis of the US National Aeronautics Advisory Committee, at the suggestion of President Eisenhower, a civil space agency was created - the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

On October 1, 1958, NASA began work and soon proposed the "Mercury" project - the launch of a spacecraft into orbit with a man on board, and the first flights of astronauts were planned as suborbital.

Space Flight Center. J. Marshall began work on July 1, 1960, and Wernher von Braun was appointed its head, as the Americans say - "a man in his place", and his team moved to NASA from the Redstone Army Arsenal.

Brown's team, 15 months after the launch of the first American satellite, with the support of President Eisenhower, began work on a manned space flight program.

On April 12, 1961, Yuri Gagarin successfully completed his orbital space flight aboard the Vostok-1 spacecraft designed by the SP Korolev Design Bureau. The second, after the launch of the first satellite of the Earth, a sensitive blow was dealt to the prestige of the United States.

The American invasion of Cuba failed on April 17, 1961, and Kennedy was forced to publicly claim responsibility for the fiasco. On April 20, 1961, Kennedy sent a memorandum to Lyndon Johnson, whom he appointed chairman of the National Space Research Council, asking him to assess the state and objectives of space research in the United States. “Can we get around the Soviet Union by launching a laboratory into space, or by flying around the Moon, or by landing a rocket on the Moon, or by sending a rocket with a man on board to fly to the Moon and back? Is there any other space program that promises an impressive result in which we can be the first? " Kennedy asked.

Johnson enthusiastically took up the search for the space initiative and made a request to von Braun. The opinion of von Braun and the leadership of NASA was that if the United States began to develop large launch vehicles, then they had an excellent chance to be the first to land astronauts on the moon and return them to Earth, and thus defeat the USSR in the space race. Lyndon Johnson held a meeting of experts, all the participants of which said unequivocally "yes" to the question - will we send a man to the moon.

On May 5, 1961, Alan Shepard became the first American to go into space, albeit in a suborbital flight. A converted rocket "Redstone" by von Braun was used as the launch vehicle. On May 25, 1961, President Kennedy delivered an extraordinary message to Congress, in which he said: "I believe that our country should set itself the goal of ensuring a man's landing on the moon and his safe return to Earth before the end of this decade." Thus, at the beginning of the prestigious US Lunar Project, there was the political will and word of President Kennedy.

Following congressional approval, the US Lunar Program was given the green light.

Von Braun and his team began by designing an experimental Saturn 1 rocket using oxygen-kerosene propellants. At the first stage of this rocket, 8 modified Jupiter rocket engines were used, which created a total thrust of 680 tons. The height of the rocket was 38.1 m, and the payload mass thrown into orbit was 10 tons. It was mainly used to test individual components of the future lunar complex, but, in addition, it launched several research satellites into orbit.

Following Saturn-1, a similar, somewhat improved LV Saturn-1B was created, the propulsion system of its first stage consisted of 8 improved engines of the Jupiter rocket (fuel components - liquid oxygen and kerosene) with a total thrust of 745 tons. the second stage used a new J-2 engine with a thrust of 104 tons on cryogenic fuel components - liquid oxygen and hydrogen. The launch weight of the Saturn-1B was 589 tons, the height was 68 m, and the payload was 16 tons. The Saturn-1B rocket was mainly used to test the stage II hydrogen engine.

With the help of the Saturn-1B launch vehicle in 1966, 2 launches of the descent vehicle of the experimental main unit of the Apollo spacecraft were carried out along a ballistic trajectory with entry into the atmosphere at a speed of 8 km / s. In the same year, the Saturn-1B rocket was launched to test the re-launch of the J-2 oxygen-hydrogen rocket engine.

Following the two-stage Saturn-1 and Saturn-1B, Werner von Braun's team conceived a three-stage Saturn-V. The propulsion system of the 1st stage consisted of 5 new F-1 engines fueled by kerosene + liquid oxygen with a thrust of 680 tons X 5 = 3401 tons. third. According to the initial design, the Saturn-V launch vehicle had a launch mass of more than 2700 tons, an altitude of 111 m, it could deliver a cargo of 140 tons to orbit or send a cargo of 47 tons to the moon.

In 1967, the first unmanned launch of the Saturn-V LV with the experimental main unit of the Apollo spacecraft along a ballistic trajectory was performed to test the descent vehicle when entering the atmosphere at a speed of 11 km / s. In 1968, a similar launch was repeated. In the same year, a lunar spacecraft (LV "Saturn-1B") without a crew was tested in near-earth orbit, then with the help of the same launch vehicle it was launched into the Earth satellite orbit and the main unit with a crew and, finally, into the selenocentric orbit of the LV "Saturn-V" "The main Apollo unit with 3 astronauts on board was launched.

Let's pay attention to some of the main points of the American "lunar" program, following B.I. Gubanov. “The development of the main provisions of the program for the creation of powerful launch vehicles, which became the basis of the Apollo program, began not from the moment it was announced in May 1961 by President Kennedy, but from the moment the creation of powerful single-chamber rocket engines of the open scheme F-1 and J-2 began in 1958 The use of liquid hydrogen on the J-2 engine as a fuel made it possible to ultimately solve the problem of the energy of the launch vehicle. The progressive program of experimental development of the complex and the principle of its complete completion (before entering flight tests) reduced the risk of fulfilling the target task to the calculated one. The following main technical problems were successfully solved on the way of creating the Saturn-V - Apollo rocket and space complex.

First of all, the creation of a unique first-stage engine F-1 with a thrust of 680 tons. The difficulties were not only in the large geometrical dimensions of this engine (height - 5.9 m), which required large industrial equipment, but, most importantly, in overcoming the barrier of combustion instability in the engine combustion chamber. Few believed in the success of the development.

The overwhelming majority of specialists from the leading engine design bureaus in the Soviet Union did not believe in the possibility of creating such an engine. And those who sympathized and suggested starting the development of domestic large engines were accused of record-breaking and gigantomania and calmed down on that. "

B.I. Gubanov had a chance to repeatedly meet with the chief engineer of this engine Jerry Thomson, who from the very beginning, working in von Braun's team, was a direct and direct participant in the process of the birth of this super-powerful engine.

“For engine builders, harnessing the runaway phenomenon of ignition and achieving sustainable combustion is engineering and intuition. Empiricism occupies the main place in this process. Answering the question “How did you decide to take such a desperate step?” Thomson said that this step was hard-won, prepared, weighed, calculated, and most importantly, it was “necessary” ... Therefore, “crossed” and stepped into the unknown. ” And the problem was solved, again, through "engineering sweat".

The next problem is the longitudinal vibrations of the Saturn-V rocket, and the most dangerous were the longitudinal vibrations in the section of the first stage propulsion system. The technical aspect of eliminating high-frequency oscillations in the engine chamber of low-frequency longitudinal oscillations in a closed system, the rocket body - propulsion system will be briefly described below.

The creation of the oxygen-hydrogen stage - the second stage of Saturn-V - was a "problematic place" and for a relatively long period was the main reason for the disruption of the work schedule.

Saturn 5

Compliance with the specified mass characteristics. This design problem accompanied the development at all stages. The lunar cabin turned out to be especially overweight (14.7 tons instead of the design 13.5 tons), so it was necessary to reduce the amount of fuel to ensure horizontal flight at a low altitude above the lunar surface to select a suitable landing site. There is only enough fuel for two minutes of flight.

The creation and selection of new structural materials, especially for engines and oxygen-hydrogen stages, has become a special direction in the Saturn-V development program. A number of new metallic materials (alloys) were developed, which received brand names, for example, Inconel X-750, Invar, etc.

The F-1 engine was developed in 1959-1966. A big engine is a big problem. Problem number 1 - to eliminate the instability of combustion in the chamber of the F-1 engine. Twenty of the 44 firing tests of the first F-1 engines had an emergency outcome due to destructive high-frequency pressure fluctuations in the engine chamber.

At the Center. Marshall, a special committee was created to study the combustion instability in the engine chamber, which was headed by Jerry Thomson. The committee included 6 permanent members and 5 consultants - from the Center. Marshall, from the Lewis Research Center, from the Air Force, from industry, from universities. A special unit to solve the problem of unstable combustion in the F-1 rocket engine was also created at the Rocketdyne company.

In response to the deep concern of the Office of Manned Space Flight, in November 1962. von Braun has prepared a special memorandum. He stressed the concern about this problem of the Center. Marshall and praised the steps taken at Rocketdyne. In turn, he did not promise a quick or easy solution. In the memo, von Braun outlined a clear understanding of the situation. “Although many organizations have been working on solving the problem of combustion instability in liquid-propellant rocket engines over the past 10 years, no one has yet come close to an adequate understanding of the process itself. Therefore, it was not possible to use the appropriate design criteria for the nozzle head to ensure stable combustion in the engine chamber. This forced the industry to take an almost entirely empirical approach to the design of the nozzle head and combustion chamber. This approach is not only expensive and time consuming - the technical solution for one engine, as a rule, does not fit the other. "

Von Braun began an extensive study of the problem and suggested that universities, in particular, send graduate students to work on various aspects of the problem of unstable combustion in liquid fuel rocket engines. In March 1963, this problem was considered one of the most serious in the Saturn-Apollo program. It took Rocketdyne 12 months to develop a nozzle head design suitable for pre-flight testing of the engine, but some nasty anomalies persisted. By July 1964, work to eliminate erratic combustion was in progress, and Rocketdyne was awarded an additional $ 22 million contract with specific instructions to accelerate research.

Significant theoretical work has been carried out by two Princeton researchers, David Harrie and Luigi Crocco, and by Richard Prim of the Lewis Research Center. NASA headquarters even complied with von Braun's request to send representatives of Rocketdine and the Center. Marshall to discuss the problem with Crocco in Rome, where he was on vacation.

Demanding attention to detail led to minor modifications to the nozzle head design, which, however, led to significant results. After careful calculations, the increase in the diameter of the fuel injection holes has led to one of the most important contributions to improving combustion stability. For this purpose, the values ​​of the angles at which the jets of oxidizer and fuel collided were also corrected. The method of experimental evaluation of the design changes of the nozzle head and the chamber was also used, which consisted in creating an impulse disturbance from the explosion of a small "bomb", which was attached to the firing bottom of the nozzle head. By the nature of the pressure change in the combustion chamber during the transient process, it was possible to judge the stability of the given chamber design and estimate the stability margins, for example, by the duration of the transient process. Changing the size of the "bomb" made it possible to obtain impulse disturbances of various magnitudes. At the beginning of this series of tests, the transient process was established in more than 1600 milliseconds, which led to a dangerous state, a successful design after the disturbance “calmed down” in 100 milliseconds.

The final design of the nozzle head included redesigned fuel nozzles (3700 pieces) and oxidizer (2600 pieces) and rationally located antipulsation baffles on the fire bottom of the nozzle head in the form of two concentric rings and 12 radial ribs dividing the combustion zone into 13 parts. These seemingly minor changes required about 18 months of work, in the end it was possible to obtain a design with excellent damping characteristics and permission from the Marshall Center to start the F-1 engine in 1965. Thus, it took Rocketdyne 7 years to cope with the problem of the F-1 engine's resistance to high frequency vibrations.

During the second unmanned flight of the Saturn-V-Apollo-6 complex, which started on April 4, 1968, longitudinal oscillations (the so-called POGO oscillations) with a frequency of ~ 5 Hz in a time interval of 105 - 140 seconds were unexpectedly detected, those. during operation of the first stage remote control. The amplitude of the axial overload oscillations reached 0.6g in the Apollo-6 command module and 0.33g in the tail section of the launch vehicle, which exceeded the values ​​allowed in the United States for manned flights. After several months of intensive research, an elegant solution was found to ensure longitudinal stability in this case, which consisted in organizing a gas cushion filled with helium gas from the oxidizer tank pressurization system (which acted as a pneumatic damper) in the cavity of the liquid oxygen pre-valve in the supply lines F-1 engines, which reduced the natural frequency of fluid vibrations from 5 to 2 Hz. That is, no special additional anti-Pogo devices, as had to be done on the R-7 and Titan-2 missiles, did not need to be developed and tested.

Aerospace Corporation has previously conducted an independent analysis of longitudinal stability and agreed with the proposed solution to eliminate longitudinal vibrations. Its effectiveness was experimentally confirmed during ground tests of Saturn-V in the "dynamic test tower" of the launch vehicle at the Marshall Center, which allowed von Braun and company to make a bold decision to conduct the next flight test of the system, but already in a manned version ( Apollo 8).

Appointed as the first director of the Space Flight Center. Marshall, Wernher von Braun controlled 40% of NASA's multi-billion dollar budget.

A unique experimental base was created, which became the "greatest national treasure" of the United States.

Werner von Braun against the background of the rocket Saturn 5

It took five years to build this base: about three years for planning and about two years for construction.

The main test benches include:

- a group of stands for fire tests of liquid-propellant rocket engines with thrust up to 700 tons at Edwards Air Force Base;

- a group of stands of the Rocketdyne firm in Santa Susan for fire tests of J-2 engines;

- a stand for frequency tests of Saturn-V rockets in suspension.

The Americans introduced a methodology for increasing the reliability of the propulsion control stages, which provides for firing bench tests of the stages and the delivery of the propulsion system for final assembly without a bulkhead. The introduction of this approach required huge funds from the NASA budget, but it fully justified itself.

- two twin test benches for preflight firing tests of the first and second stages of the Saturn-V LV on the territory of the NASA complex in Mississippi;

- a set of stands for pre-flight fire tests of the third stage at the test base in Sacramento;

- Complex No. 39 at Cape Canaveral, where the Saturn-V-Apollo complex was assembled in a vertical assembly building and transported together with the launch platform in a vertical position to the launch stand.

Particular importance in the "lunar" program is given to increasing the reliability of all components of the "Saturn-V" -Apollo "complex.

In June 1962, von Braun, after much discussion, gave preference to a lunar flight with a meeting in selenocentric orbit (WSO), which was proposed by engineer John Houbolt of the Research Center. Langley. Although earlier Brown adhered to his own flight scheme with a meeting in a geocentric orbit (VGO). “The IZO scheme gives the most confidence in a successful flight over a 10-year period,” said von Braun. This decision by Brown, with his immense authority, seemed surprising, but clearly demonstrated his ability to put business interests above personal ambitions. (As the researchers rightly point out, this could not have happened in the USSR).

In 1962, the design of the lunar ship was carried out in general terms. The responsibility for the design of the Saturn-V LV was assigned to Wernher von Braun and his team from the Marshall Center. NASA signed contracts for the first stage with Boeing, the second with North American Aviation, and the third with Douglas.

In September 1963, George Mueller became NASA's new Head of Manned Space Flight. He immediately gave instructions to make a rigorous and objective analysis of the state of the Saturn V - Apollo program and, most importantly, a realistic estimate of the date for the first landing of astronauts on the moon. It turned out that we can talk about the end of 1971. Müller demanded radical changes in plans in order to speed up the work. In preparation for the flight to the moon, Brown's team set out to thoroughly test each of the Saturn V stages separately before combining them for final testing. Mueller made an important decision - to test the first stage not with mock-ups, but with real upper stages, which will give him the opportunity to gain time and fly to the moon before the end of the decade. Again, Brown agreed, setting aside his own original plan for developing Saturn-V.

Kennedy and von Braun

On January 16, 1963, President Kennedy visited the Cape Canaveral Launch Control Center to review the progress of the Lunar Program. Wernher von Braun also came to this center to demonstrate to the President "Saturn - I" and mock-ups of equipment for the lunar ship. What he saw made a strong impression on Kennedy, but on November 20, 1963, the Senate cut NASA's budget by $ 612 million. On November 21, Kennedy went on a tour of Texas, and one of the goals of the trip was to intensify support for his "lunar" initiative. And on November 22, shots rang out in Dallas. NASA feared that the assassination of the president could lead to the closure of the Saturn-Apollo program. But Lyndon Johnson, who succeeded Kennedy as president, proved to be a worthy successor to his predecessor's cause. Meanwhile, the first suborbital flights of American astronauts under the Mercury project took place. Von Braun developed a very good relationship with the astronauts who respected and admired him.

In 1967, an American tragedy struck - the crew of the first Apollo ship - Chaffee, White, Grissom - died at Cape Canaveral due to a fire in a capsule filled with oxygen. This catastrophe delayed the implementation of the Lunar program for 2 years. In 1968, Americans experienced events that distracted the public from space affairs. This is the Vietnam War and the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King. Young people in the United States en masse were addicted to sex, drugs and rock music.

Despite everything, the Saturn-Apollo program moved forward rapidly. 1969 was the year of the successful landing of astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin on the moon and their safe return to Earth.

In Huntsville, after the successful flight of the Saturn V-Apollo 11 system to the moon, the townspeople carried von Braun through the city streets in their arms. August 13, 1969 - Parade on Broadway in New York, presidential dinner at the Sanchery Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles for 1,440 guests, including von Braun and his wife Maria.

After the end of the Saturn-Apollo program, von Braun outlined a broad and far-reaching space program, which included the completion of lunar exploration, the launch of remote sensing satellites, a reusable spacecraft, stations in low-earth orbit and a manned expedition to Mars, and prepared an article on this topic for Reader's Digest on the new cosmic plane, however, it was never published.

The new NASA administrator Thomas Payne, the one who proposed canceling the last 4 flights to the moon in order to save 6 billion, understood and saw that the center was. Marshall has fulfilled his mission and does not have a portfolio of significant projects for the future, and his director could either be left without significant business in Huntsville, or help chart NASA's future course at headquarters in Washington.

Payne invited von Braun to work at NASA to plan future US space programs. In February 1970, von Braun took up a new job. In March 1970, President Nixon endorsed the least expensive (US $ 5.1 billion) option for a future space program, the shuttle, deeply disappointing management and all NASA staff (the actual cost of this project was US $ 10 billion). Von Braun considered the chosen design option for the Space Shuttle dangerous - solid-propellant rockets were never used as boosters, and there was no emergency evacuation system for the crew. And, as the Challenger disaster showed, he was right.

Thomas Paine announced his resignation in 1970. Von Braun lost his most powerful ally. As one of his German colleagues noted: “From that day on, von Braun was not himself. He could be seen wandering lonely along the long corridors. "

The expedition to Mars was generally postponed indefinitely.

Full of plans and designs, von Braun understood that his career in large rocket and space technology was over, but he did not give up.

As Bob Dylan sang in his famous song - "times - they change." Having won the lunar race, the American public has lost interest in space projects. The war in Vietnam demanded large expenditures, and there was a decline in the economy.

On June 30, 1972, 60-year-old von Braun left NASA and accepted an invitation from his friend Edd Uhl, president of Fairchild Industries Corporation, a small private aerospace firm, to become executive vice president of development. He was entrusted with the strategic planning of the future of the corporation. Von Braun was held in high esteem by his new collaborators. At this time, Brown began to have health problems.

The last flight to the moon took place in 1972, the thirteenth and last. "Saturn - V" put the manned space station "Skylab" into orbit, replacement crews (3 × 3) were delivered to the station of the Brownian LV "Saturn - IB".

In the summer of 1973, Brown was diagnosed with a malignant kidney tumor. His kidney was removed and he underwent radiation therapy. Von Braun managed to win another victory, this time over a terrible illness, and return to work, but not for long. At that time, von Braun's main project was the project of the applied technology satellite (OBTS) - a powerful repeater that provided TV reception using inexpensive equipment. In 1974, PTS was launched into geostationary orbit over India to transmit primarily educational programs to 2,700 villages. Attempts by von Braun and the company's management to sell this technology elsewhere were unsuccessful.

After a 40-year hiatus, von Braun began flying again in gliders and airplanes, and received a license to fly a seaplane. As a glider pilot, von Braun received the Silver Badge, having risen to a height of 3353 m above the Adirondack Mountains.

In 1975, von Braun had a relapse of the disease - tumor cells were found in the intestines, and a second operation followed, courses of chemotherapy and blood transfusion, but this time the disease did not recede.

Von Braun resigned on December 31, 1976, and in early 1977, President Gerald Ford awarded Wernher von Braun the National Medal of Science, which his former boss Edd Ul. Von Braun was touched by this recognition of his services to the United States.

In the last days of von Braun's life, his family gathered in a hospital in Alexandria (Virginia) - wife Maria, daughters Iris and Margrit, son Peter. The heart of the great rocket scientist stopped beating on June 16, 1977. They buried him in Alexandria. In the same year, Maria von Braun passed away. Their family life was called cloudless. When Huntsville celebrated the 100th anniversary of von Braun's birth, his daughter Margrit said the phrase: "No matter how things turned out at work, my father spent all Sundays with his family." At the Alexandria hospital, von Braun was visited by Neil Armstrong, the man who first set foot on the moon. His rehearsed impromptu "This is a small step for man, but a big leap for mankind" went down in history, like Gagarin's "Let's Go!" Von Braun told Armstrong: “Statistically, my prospects for survival are pretty bleak. Although you know, my misfortune has one positive side - now I am with my wife and children all the time. "

Von Braun was a person of extremely diverse interests, who loved life in all its manifestations. In America, he was fond of flying and water sports - water skiing, diving; personally drove cars and boats, traveled a lot, incl. to Antarctica, and has always been an optimist. He knew how to be friends and take care of his loved ones. All his life he respected his teacher, Hermann Obert, who was 8 years older and outlived his most talented student by 12 years. He contrived to arrange for Obert to visit the Peenemünde security facility, where Brown proudly showed him the A-4 missile. During the difficult post-war years, von Braun sent Obertha food parcels to Germany. He invited Obert to the historic Apollo 11 launch to the Moon.

In this article, the phrase "von Braun's team" is used repeatedly. Not being able to name the composition of the team - it is more than a hundred people, we will indicate at least a few bright names. All of them were not only associates, but also friends of Wernher von Braun. This is Eberhard Rees, for 30 years - von Braun's deputy for research and development (in our terminology), who replaced von Braun as director of the Center. Marshal; Kurt Debus, who supervised the A-4 test launches and all launches to the Moon, director of the Center. J. Kennedy; Ernst Stuhlinger, scientist, director of the research department of the Center. Marshal, Ion Propulsion Specialist; Arthur Rudolph was one of the first to join the team, in 1933, director of the Mittelwerk plant, head of the Saturn-V program at the Center
them. Marshall.

To better understand the working conditions of the astronauts, von Braun practiced in a space suit in a hydroelectricity pool and experienced weightlessness in a special aircraft; helped young American astronauts in the construction of the observatory, participated in the congresses of the International Astronautical Federation, where he met with Soviet cosmonauts. And in parallel, von Braun was always busy writing articles and books, mostly popular science. The list of his published works is very long, within the framework of the article we will name only a few significant, in our opinion, positions.

In 1952-1953. von Braun publishes a series of "space" articles in Collies: Crossing the Last Frontier, Man on the Moon: Journey, Moon Explorer, Crash and, co-authored with Ryan, Little Space Station, Can We to get to Mars? "

The titles of the articles themselves say what Wernher von Braun thought and dreamed of. At the same time, his "Martian Project" (in 1952 - in Germany, in 1953 - in the USA), the books "Beyond the Space Frontier" (1952), "Conquest of the Moon" (1953) were published in a book version. ), Exploration of Mars (with Willie Leigh, 1956). In 1956, Brown published an article "Memories of German Rockets" in the journal of the British Interplanetary Society, in 1958 - a carefully filtered article "Space Man: The Story of My Life" (von Braun's story about himself, recorded by K. Mitchell and published in three numbers of American Weekly).

In 1966, von Braun, in co-authorship with his friend Frederick Orduay III, published the encyclopedia "History of rockets and space travel", reprinted in 1975. The above titles are just some characteristic positions from an extensive list of his works. For example, in only one journal, Popular Science, von Braun published 73 articles. Von Braun's diaries, which he kept from May 1958 to March 1970, have also been published. In 2007, the book The Voice of Wernher von Braun, a collection of his speeches throughout his career, was published in Toronto. He was an excellent lobbyist for his projects and, in general, rocket and space technology. Von Braun wrote articles and books in German and English, and they were translated in many countries. However, as far as the author knows, there are no translations into Russian - to our great regret. I am sure that selected works by Wernher von Braun would have found a Russian-speaking reader.

More than ten universities in the United States and Germany have awarded him the honorary title of professor.

Von Braun was appreciated by the presidents of the United States - Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford.

The research institute and Center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, streets in German cities (Bonn, Mannheim, Mainz and smaller cities), avenues in New York are named after Werner von Braun.

A crater on the Moon is named after him, where the giant Saturn-5 rocket (or is it Saturn-Fau?) Delivered the first Earthlings.

His lunar American dream came true, but it was not only von Braun's personal dream - the dream of all mankind came true.

P.S. Top manager von Braun's creed

This is how von Braun outlined his credo in a report at the All-American Conference on Organization and Management in the Age of Scientific and Technological Progress, September 4-7, 1962. held in Seattle.

1. Make people work hard and keep them happy.

2. To organize work in such a way that none of the staff loses their face, does not express dissatisfaction, does not quit.

3. To bring peace to the minds of employees who are plagued by routine, dry relations, to reassure those who are convinced that management is not connected with collective thought.

4. To achieve the maximum productivity of the team and at the same time to provide a sense of job satisfaction, to exclude the possibility of conflicts.

5. Management in itself is not a problem. Problems arise when people do not clearly understand their tasks and methods of solving them.

6. Discussions about organization and management can be deadlocked. The management technique must be considered taking into account the specific people to be controlled.

7. The decision-maker must respond to facts and inquiries promptly.

Received May 30, 2012

Reviewer: Cand. tech. Sci. S.V. Tarasov, Institute of Transport Systems and Technologies, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine.

TWO LIVES THAT TWO ROCKETS WERNER VON BROWN (1912-1977).
UNTIL 100-RICHCHYA ІTH BIRTHDAY

V.A. Zadontsev

The statistic presents material, including little, about the life and activity of Werner von Braun in the United States, the creator of the first in the light of the long-range ballistic missile from the RRD - A-4 (Fau-2) and the important carrier rockets ”, She brought the American astronauts to Misyats. The role of von Braun in the development of RRDs of cich missiles is shown, including the F-1 and J-2, the infrastructure of the rocket galley in Germany and the USA, in the propaganda of space interests, space complexes.

Key words: Werner von Braun, Hermann Obert, rocket, RRD. Peenemünde, V-2, Center im. Marshall, Saturn-V, moving F-1, J-2.

TWO LIVES AND TWO ROCKETS OF WERNER VON BRAUN (1912-1977).
TO THE 100TH ANNIVERSARY OF HIS BIRTH

V.A. Zadontsev

The article presents information, including little-known facts, about Wernher’s Von Braun life and work in
Germany and the United States as a creator of the world "s first ballistic long-range missile with a liquid-propellant rocket engine - A-4 (V-2) and heavy launch vehicle Saturn-V, delivered the American astronauts to the Moon . Reflected von Braun "s role in the development of liquid-propellant rocket engine for these missiles, including the F-1 and J-2, building infrastructure of the industry in Germany and the United States, in promoting space flights, shows some features of von Braun as a person and as a chief designer of rocket and missile and space systems.

Key words: Wernher Von Braun, Hermann Oberth, rocket, liquid-propellant rocket engine, Peenemünde, V-2, Marshall's Center, Saturn-V, engines F-1, J-2.

Zadontsev Vladimir Antonovich- Dr. Tech. Sci., Professor, Chief Researcher, Institute of Transport Systems and Technologies, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine.

[* 2] - A still from the documentary film "Yangel" by Vladimir Platonov. 1 series. Ustinovsky landing. Shown on Channel 9 in Dnepropetrovsk.