Celebrating 50 Years of America in Space Fifty Years Ago, a Group of German Rocket Pioneers Led the Team That Put America Into Space
Click here for Full Issue of EIR Volume 35, Number 8, February 22, 2008 EIR Science & Technology Celebrating 50 Years Of America in Space Fifty years ago, a group of German rocket pioneers led the team that put America into space. Marsha Freeman reports on a celebration held to mark that milestone. For millions of Americans, the successful launch of the Ex- cle, a 36-story, 6.5-million-pound rocket. Its remarkable re- plorer-1 satellite on the evening of Jan. 31, 1958, three months cord includes 13 launches without any failures, a testament after the Soviet Union orbited Sputnik, allowed a sigh of re- not only to the meticulous design, rigorous testing, and ex- lief. For a team of over 100 German space pioneers, it was the traordinary management of this complex project, but also to culmination of nearly two decades of rocket experiments, and the decades of dedication of the German space pioneers to the proved that soon, man himself, could explore space. dream of space flight. The German rocket team that came to the United States That dream was energized in the late 1920s by Hermann after World War II, under the leadership of Wernher von Oberth, who himself took the dreams of Johannes Kepler, Braun, had already carried out many of the tests, and experi- Jules Verne, and others before him, and created the scientific enced the failures, necessary for the technology of space flight and engineering basis to make manned space flight a reality.1 to be born. As teenagers in Germany in the 1930s, some had In 1927, the German Society for Space Travel was orga- participated in amateur rocket clubs to begin the small-scale nized in Breslau, formed by space enthusiasts, with the after- experiments that would eventually take men to the Moon, and school participation of a teenage Wernher von Braun, and to carry out educational campaigns to excite the public about guidance from Professor Oberth.
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