Dr. Space: The Life of Wernher Von Braun

by Bob Ward, John Glenn (Foreword)

Explores the life and achievements of the rocketry pioneer who designed rockets for the Nazi war effort early in his career and later became a leading figure in the American space program.

Genres: Space, Biography, History, Science, Nonfiction, Astronomy, World War II

282 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 2005

About the author

A former editor-in-chief of The Huntsville Times, Bob Ward covered the von Braun rocket team as a reporter.

Reviews

[Jeff Greason · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have had a copy of this for years, a gift from the author, but just now read it. In contrast to other biographies of von Braun, it focused more on the person than the hero or villain of other accounts. I was enthralled. I have never read a biography where I so closely identified with the subject. I regret never knowing him in life; I feel as if we'd have had a lot to talk about, long in to the night. A very balanced account, and excellently crafted by the author.

[Readosaurus · Rating 3 out of 5]

Incredibly precocious and driven towards his goals, Wernher von Braun was a headstrong and unruly child with a predilection for thrill seeking and testing the rules. Whilst he always displayed a strong intellectualism, he only really began to apply himself to his studies, especially Maths that he initially disliked, when he became obsessed with rockets and the idea of travelling to space. The idea of space travel has now entered the popular consciousness to such a degree that it is now probably impossible to imagine how radical this idea was for young, aristocratic German schoolboy. Appreciation of Von Braun’s technological abilities are largely too technical for a layperson to comprehend; however, his status as a visionary regarding space travel is plain to see.

A voracious reader and polymath, von Braun was convinced of the incomparable philosophical and scientific value of space travel. Initially, most thought it an ill-conceived, and even sacrilegious, fantasy. Latterly, some criticised the spending of billions of dollars on a project with little immediate tangible benefit to society, suggesting the money might be better spent on alleviating poverty or other problems closer to home. Von Braun emphasised the longer term benefits such a project might bring. First, scientific innovation; for example, satellite technology allowing data to be shared worldwide in an age before the internet. The applications were myriad; monitoring crops, tracking shoals of fish, beaming lesson plans to classrooms in Indian villages without electricity and many more. Of course, many other scientific innovations were derived from the space program too. Secondly, von Braun also championed the philosophical value of space travel. Not primarily as a means of demonstrating America’s cultural and intellectual superiority to the USSR, which was probably the government’s major motivation, but rather as the source of mankind’s ultimate salvation. Building a ‘bridge to the stars’ could allow us to outlive the burning out of our sun and escape our evolutionary destiny. He was also clearly captivated by the magical inspiration of space travel and man’s ability to leave his own planet. There’s no simple answer to this question and I didn’t feel like this book was the right place for an exhaustive discussion, which it, rightly, doesn’t attempt and I’m sure could occupy several thousand pages! However, the testimony of von Braun and the author should clearly be taken with a pinch of salt given their extreme passion, and subsequent bias, about the subject!!

Von Braun was a magnetic, good-looking and extremely charming individual with exceptional talents for leadership. He was a very hands-on manager, with a high level of technical ability and a tireless learner and reader who always asked pertinent questions of his subordinates. He seems to have been very adept at building relationships, motivating teams and making those under him feel valued and important. He seems to have been extremely loquacious and enjoyed talking to anyone really! As Ward summarises in the Epilogue, “he was a leader, with the versatility that leaders of genius must possess. Because he worked with rockets, I would call him a rocket man, but that is a cold term, and he was anything but cold. He was warm and friendly man, interested in everyone around him, no matter who they were. He had a marvelous knack for explaining his machines in simple, understandable, human language. And he never seemed to busy to share his ideas - and he was full of them - with others” (p309).

Despite his personal charisma, the question remains: Did he really care about anything except progress in rocket technology? Clearly this was his guiding principle and he used multitudinous means towards this end; like most single minded activities, this has positive and negative aspects. His achievements seem to bear testimony to the practical efficacy of this myopia. However, he arguably had little loyalty to anything except his work; switching sides from Germany to the US and then later from NASA in Maryville to Washington without taking any of his staff, who had been with him since WW2. Personal traits detailed in the book, such as never carrying any cash and never returning borrowed items, could support a hypothesis of a man who didn’t really care about anyone, or anything, else but himself and his project. To me, the magnitude of what he achieved make it almost certain he was this type of man. The allusions made to his enjoyment of the company of women could be interpreted as evidence of a similar attitude regarding adultery although the author dismisses this idea without really providing any evidence for this decision. This tendency to see the best in Von Braun recurs throughout the book whenever tricky questions arise.

Arguably the most pressing moral questions in the book relate to WW2 and his role as the head of the V2 rocket program under Hitler. First, was von Braun moral responsible for the casualties caused by the rockets he designed? Here we find him responding eloquently and persuasively in a letter, “‘When your country is at war, when friends are dying, when your family is in constant danger, when the bombs are bursting around you and you lose your own home, the concept of a just war becomes very vague and remote and you strive to inflict on the enemy as much or more than you and your relatives have suffered.’ (p69). Nonetheless, it seems odd that he immediately forgot these concerns when he surrendered to the USA at the end of the war, something someone who prioritised loyalty to one’s countrymen would probably never consider. Against this, one could argue that the mentality described in his letter is one that only exists in times of war and once the brutality of conflict ceases, this mindset ends too. Secondly, the rockets he designed were built by POW in atrocious conditions in an underground mine to avoid bombing by Allied planes. Again, the circumstances of war and the emotional and psychological states it produces make this a highly complicated moral question. However, claims that he was unaware of these conditions should surely be considered false given his obsession with detail and intricate knowledge of all other parts of the project. The ultimate decision to adopt this form of manufacturing wasn’t his and he was, in all likelihood, powerless to alter it but could he have absented himself from the project without risking harm to himself or his family? I suspect only a very few people would have sufficient knowledge of the circumstances and political climate at the time to give an accurate assessment of these risks so I won’t attempt to answer this question. However, I suspect that von Braun’s single mindedness about rocket science was the deciding factor; I can’t envisage him wanting to stop work regardless of the obstacle placed in his way. He would have always found a way to rationalise things to himself, such was his dedication to his passion. The author himself, perhaps in thrall to von Braun’s personal charms, is keen to absolve him of any wrong doing to the extent that he includes this passage: “Ironically, a number of US and Allied military experts, including Winston Churchill and Dwight Eisenhower, came to the conclusion that because Berlin spent millions of Reichsmarks and precious labour and material on Dornberger and von Braun’s rocketry efforts, instead of building more warplanes and tanks, thousands of Allied soldiers’ lives were probably saved.” (p70). While this may be a highly charitable interpretation of his role, this does not necessarily prevent it from also being correct. I feel it is probably an impossible question to answer objectively.

Von Braun’s membership of the SS has some similar characteristics. Ward draws von Braun as fairly apolitical, albeit with liberal leanings, and certainly not as a supporter of either Hitler or the SS. However, he ends up joining the institution out of political necessity given his high status within the German Army. Again, it’s not possible to tell how avoidable this was but I suspect it was close to mandatory in a Fascist state during a war when one would doubtless suffer extreme paranoia and anxiety about the safety of oneself and one’s family. In the end, his membership proved crucial in allowing him to forge orders on SS stationary allowing him and his team to escape Peenemunde and eventually surrender to the Americans at the end of the war. As to whether one actions justifies the other, these are precisely the kind of unanswerable questions that the conditions of war throw up in abundance and to which I claim no special ability to be able to answer. The author, clearly a fan of both von Braun and space travel more generally, seems to think the ends justify, or at least excuse, the means. What I can say is that I’m not sure I would have acted any better, and perhaps I would have done considerably worse, if I were placed in his von Braun’s shoes.

Von Braun’s time in America is considerably less problematic in moral and ethical terms. Initially bored in the US as him and his team were treated with suspicion by their new bosses; much of their work was limited to explaining the superior rocket technology they had developed at Peenemunde. However, von Braun took the opportunity to travel widely dispersing his ideas about space travel, which he had been unable to do in Germany. A natural salesman he soon had considerable success to this end and received good funding from the US army and a move to the leafy NASA centre at Huntsville, Alabama from the hot monotony of the desert at Fort Bliss in Texas, which seems to have been anything but blissful! What followed was a meteoric rise up the NASA hierarchy hindered only by anti-German sentiments and internal politics. He made huge and wide-ranging contributions to the Apollo space programs and his team’s Saturn V rockets were instrumental in taking the first man to the moon. Some part of this is due to the concatenation of circumstances; namely, the huge importance, and equally large funding, given to the project by JFK owing to its importance in the context of the Cold War. As mentioned earlier, his switch to Washington, an apparent attempt to drive further missions to Mars, were disastrous and he ended up working for Fairchild Industries for the latter part of his career in a role that seems to have been a mixture of engineer, project manager and space superstar turned salesman with the emphasis on the latter!

Biographies are inevitably written by people who have a passion for the person whose life they detail. As such, most biographical authors will possess a level of knowledge and detail that far surpasses the scope of single book and the appetites of the lay reader. Balancing completeness against the need to create a narrative simple and engaging enough for the lay person to enjoy is a ubiquitous challenge. Bob Ward includes some excellent chapters on von Braun’s personal shortcomings and habits (e.g. 12 - ‘Nobody’s Perfect’ & 15 - ‘En route to Victory’). They’re full of quirky, idiosyncratic details and create a vivid and evocative portrait of a complex, multifaceted and flawed genius. Other chapters, for example chapter 1, are less good, lapse into hagiography and reveal very little about von Braun’s character. Some of the anecdotes are so hackneyed that it doesn’t matter if von Braun was their originator, which I strongly suspect he wasn’t, they are simply too cliched for inclusion. In fairness, with the exception of the first chapter, there are probably only two or three really jarring instances of this fault. Another shortcoming, which is far less gratuitous and annoying than the banal anecdotes but more common, is a tendency to focus too heavily on the machinations within NASA. The author clearly followed his career so closely while he was resident at Huntsville, Alabama that he seems to have lost some critical perception as to what level of detail is appropriate for the audience. Clearly, this judgement is objective and there will surely be readers who are especially interested in this period; for example, those from Alabama or with a specific interest in NASA. However, for me it was all a bit esoteric.

On the whole, I found this to be an average account of what was clearly an exceptional life. It is very thoroughly researched and this turns out to be both a blessing and a curse. There are some truly excellent sections and some rather underwhelming ones and I felt like the book would have benefitted from more sagacious selection of material given that the author clearly had so much to chose from. It provided an interesting biographical sketch of von Braun, raised some demanding moral and ethical questions about his career and described the post-war development of NASA’s space programs from an interesting perspective. At its best it’s provocative and insightful but in its weaker passages it slips into platitudes and sycophancy. Other passages are overly detailed and a bit dull.

[Stephen Curran · Rating 4 out of 5]

A quote from the Sun's 1977 obituary of Wernher von Braun: "The man who invented the V-2 rockets that struck terror into the hearts of Londoners... also the genius who designed the fabulous Saturn 5 rocket that put American Neil Armstrong on the Moon." So, a life of vast contradictions, lived right at the heart of the twentieth century.

It is, of course, his history that makes this biography so compelling, even if the execution is never more than competent. But then, you hardly need flashy writing when the tale is so remarkable. The whole thing rattles along with walk-on parts from the major players of the last 100 years, from Hitler to Walk Disney to Arthur C Clarke, and is jammed with WTF moments. Grand stuff.

[Charles Haywood · Rating 4 out of 5]

In 1969, when men first landed on the Moon, Wernher von Braun was seen as the herald of, and driving force behind, a brilliant expansionist future for mankind. He was world-famous, in a way that no man can be today, given the fragmented attention of the modern internet-driven globe. But from the perspective of 2023, we can see that even at this apparent apogee, America had already begun its long retreat from Space. No surprise, then, that von Braun’s star has faded. Yet he has never been fully forgotten, and I suspect that among the handful of men who will, or may, make our future, his story is very well known. And for the rest of us, it is worth pondering what his life says about the years to come.

The book itself is not flashy. The author, the late Bob Ward, was a newspaper reporter who lived in the same city as von Braun and reported on him from 1957 until his death in 1977. For his book, published in 2005, he conducted extensive interviews with colleagues, friends, assistants and secretaries (though not von Braun’s wife or children). What we get is newspaper-type recitation of facts and quotes from people who knew von Braun. Ward does not pursue matters harder to tease out; for example, he makes more than a few references to von Braun’s religiosity, but we are left in the dark whether von Braun went to church, and we get no glimpse at all of his inner spiritual life. Similarly, his wife and children are largely ciphers. It doesn’t really matter, because von Braun is worth studying for his impact on space exploration, and not for any other reason, but a little color would have been nice.

Von Braun was born a Prussian aristocrat, in 1912. He was, if not a prodigy, extremely bright, and by his early teens already keenly interested in rocketry. When he graduated secondary school, in 1929, he attached himself to Hermann Oberth, Germany’s equivalent of the American rocket pioneer Robert Goddard. Germany was then gripped by a space craze, and Germany led the world in science and technology, so he was in the right place at the right time. Rocketry was then a combination of unproven theory and (dangerous) experiment. Along with advancing both, von Braun also learned related practical skills—such as how to transform a chunk of steel “as large as a child’s head” into a walnut-sized perfectly symmetrical cube, using only a hand file. Such understanding material and its limitations, exemplifying Matthew B. Crawford’s “tacit knowledge” about the unalterable “truth” of physical things, learned by accomplishing a task that can only be understood by doing, created a strong base for von Braun’s future life’s work.

The Oberth group launched many small rockets, but money was always in short supply. However, in 1932 the German military took notice of rocketry (which was not limited by the Treaty of Versailles), and the money problem disappeared. This was when another talent of von Braun’s appeared—salesman. He was a consummate pitchman for what he believed in, and what he believed in was the future of man in space. He didn’t care one way or the other about military applications, but the men with guns had the money, and they paid for his rockets. This was his approach throughout his career.

During this same time, he attended college in Berlin, and in 1932 received a degree in mechanical engineering, followed by a doctorate in physics in 1934. He joined the air force for two years, and learned how to fly, something he did his whole life, often recklessly. By 1937, only twenty-five, von Braun was technical director of German military rocketry efforts, based near the Baltic village of Peenemünde. Here yet another talent of his, again one not often found among geniuses, emerged—manager. He was very good at picking talent, and even better at getting talent to work together in harness. His leadership was strengthened by his being unflappable when technical problems arose, and being obsessively hands-on about fixing them. The team gradually scaled up rockets, with the aim of helping the German war effort—first the A-1, then the A-2, and finally the A-4, renamed the V-2.

As with other German wonder-weapon efforts, rockets were alternately starved of funding and made the object of obsessive focus, as the demands made by Adolf Hitler changed based on the changing fortunes of war. Moreover, rocket progress was slow, not surprising considering that nearly all the Germans were achieving in rocketry was being invented as they went along. Hitler, generally a skeptic, visited Peenemünde only once, on von Braun’s twenty-seventh birthday, and was not much impressed by the progress rockets had made—though Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS, was more impressed, and took a personal interest in the following years. Himmler’s interest was dangerous for von Braun, who viewed “his” rockets primarily as the basis for future human space exploration, with the war as an unfortunate temporary hassle requiring him to focus on military applications. This sort of opinion, and talk about it, was frowned on by the military who actually ran the Peenemünde operation, and even more frowned on by the SS. Von Braun was at one point arrested, interrogated, and threatened with being charged with treason. In one of the many internal power struggles in the Third Reich, however, Albert Speer, then the very successful minister in charge of war production, working with von Braun’s Army friends, got him released and back to work.

In 1943, the Allies bombed Peenemünde, killing nearly a thousand people and setting back the German rocket program significantly. Main production was thereafter moved to an underground factory in central Germany, called Mittelwerk, though technical work remained at Peenemünde, as did von Braun. Himmler took an ever-greater role in the rocketry program, including arranging for prisoners of war to be used as ill-treated forced laborers. Thousands died, a touchy subject for von Braun for the rest of his life. These changes further delayed the V-2, which only came into use in 1944, too late to be of real help in the war. About three thousand V-2s were fired, killing about five thousand people. (By contrast, Allied bombing killed around a million German civilians.) Von Braun didn’t care, at all, although he tried to hedge in later years—not only was he helping the German war effort, as was his duty, but he was also advancing his goal of getting mankind to space.

As the Third Reich collapsed, von Braun was faced with the problem of how best to protect himself, and the people for whom he was responsible, the large group of technical experts he had assembled and worked with for years. The government moved von Braun’s equipment to Mittelwerk and, fortunately for them, the technicians themselves south, to the Bavarian Alps, where the Americans were heading. When the war ended, they quickly announced themselves to the Americans, who were eager to acquire rocket expertise. The Russians were also looking for rocket experts, and did manage to scrape quite a few together from elsewhere, but did not get the cream of the crop. The gregarious von Braun quickly became popular among the American military men, and with his cooperation, the Army narrowed the list to just over a hundred engineers, and their families, in what was later called Operation Paperclip (from the paperclip used on a man’s file to signify his selection). Moving outside of regular immigration channels, on what were initially short-term contracts, the German team moved to Texas.

America quickly became home for von Braun; it does not seem that leaving his ancestral home and homeland troubled him much. Primarily, that was because he saw this as the best way to realize his life goals. Secondarily, all his family’s estates and fortune had been stolen by the Allies and given to the Poles, so he had nothing to go back to anyway. In 1947, however, he did return to Germany for a few months, to marry his eighteen-year-old first cousin. And so, for the next fifteen years, von Braun worked on American military rockets, moving in 1950, at age thirty-eight, to Huntsville, which would be his home for the next twenty years.

His salesman skills, and his ability to hold forth on nearly any scientific matter (and many non-scientific matters, especially history—he was a polymath, and had little use for passive “recreation” such as golf), combined with the times, made him famous. He assiduously cultivated what would today be called “influencers,” ranging from Walt Disney to Walter Cronkite to Arthur C. Clarke. Von Braun was quick-witted, too. When a woman told him she would bet him ten dollars that God didn’t want man to leave Earth, he retorted that the Bible said nothing about space flight but that it was clearly against gambling. And when asked about women astronauts, he said that the astronauts (all men) were very much for it, and “We’re reserving 110 pounds of payload for recreational equipment.” (This is the correct approach to the foolish idea of female astronauts.)

He was egotistical, always stealing the spotlight at any gathering, yet he was self-referential enough to maintain the deep loyalty of those who worked for him (and in return he was loyal to them, which was just as important). He was decisive, a key trait highly desired by subordinates that is often ignored. (They don’t teach you in business school that being decisive is at least six hundred times more important in a leader than “building consensus.”) It was some of his peers, or those who thought they were his peers, who resented that von Braun was more popular than they, and tried to cause him trouble in the bureaucratic managerial regime that America had already become. He traveled constantly, but still, it seems to have been a good marriage (and despite von Braun’s pre-marriage reputation as a womanizer, one not marred by infidelity).

Initially, von Braun worked primarily on the Redstone rocket, the first American ballistic missile. He pushed for satellite launches using the Redstone, but this was an uphill battle, as the need for satellites was less obvious than the need for missiles, and most men in the government thought the Soviet Union far behind, and thus satellites of lesser importance. Moreover, Huntsville was not the only center for rocket research; the Navy produced the new, unproven Vanguard system, which was chosen as the vehicle for America’s first satellite launch. But when Vanguard proved incapable, and when the Soviet launch of Sputnik in 1957 showed America was in fact behind, the Redstone rocket was used to launch both satellites and America’s first man in space, Alan Shepard.

Gradually civilian space uses, or at least space uses not wholly military, came to the fore. NASA was established in 1958, and NASA opened the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville in 1960, of which von Braun became director. The 1960s were the pinnacle of von Braun’s success. The Marshall Center developed the Saturn rockets, which sent the first men to the moon in 1969. It was the culmination of everything for which von Braun had worked. Everyone of importance, from the President on down, publicly hailed the accomplishment and predicted a new era for mankind.

Von Braun’s real goal was getting mankind off Earth; the Moon was just a stepping stone. “The importance of the space program is not surpassing the Soviets in space. The importance is to build a bridge to the stars, so that when the Sun dies, humanity will not die.” What von Braun wanted most of all for his own lifetime was to go to Mars, which he saw as the next step in mankind’s outward journey. This wasn’t a secret; he talked about it often, even when he first arrived in America. In 1952, he wrote a book called Project Mars, which was basically a technical work on how to get to Mars, attached as an appendix to a novel. The parallels in this to Elon Musk, of whom more shortly, are obvious (in a strange twist, the administrator of Mars in von Braun’s novel is “the Elon.”)

And then everything went downhill for von Braun, and for mankind. The rot which started to eat America in the 1960s swamped his grand dreams, as politicians moved on and the Zeitgeist turned sour. In retrospect, we can see that this was inevitable, tied to the declining arc of our own society. Even before 1969, powerful and rising demagogues wanting to extract never-ending handouts from the successful core of American society criticized the “Moondoggle.” In fact, a good deal of von Braun’s time was spent trying to rebut those voices, as if logic had any relevance to their parasitic demands. He pointed out the downstream economic benefits of NASA spending, given that all the money was being spent here, not on the Moon. He was reduced to a shotgun spray of promises, selling Space as helping “unemployment, balance of trade, increase in food production, protecting the environment, developing health care, energy, world peace.” More and more, his pleas fell on deaf ears, a new experience for him.

Even prior to the first Moon landing, and despite the euphoria that greeted that accomplishment, NASA funding was declining, as the poison of the 1960s took hold. Disasters such as the so-called Civil Rights Act and the Hart-Celler Act, perhaps the most destructive laws in American history, date back to 1964 and 1965, after all. Still, von Braun pressed on, and what he aimed to do was get Congress to fund a twenty-year program of further advancement in space exploration, culminating in a manned landing on Mars. Therefore, in 1970 he accepted a high position at NASA—in Washington, D.C., where he thought he could be more effective at selling his program.

It was a disaster. Von Braun left all he had built in Huntsville, and in Washington, he was frozen out by those who held the bureaucratic power at NASA. In part this was due to the changing times, in part to the jealously of lesser men, and in part due to dislike of von Braun’s past service to the National Socialist regime in Germany, especially on the part of George Low, the Deputy Administrator of NASA, who was Jewish. Back in Huntsville, the remaining Germans from Operation Paperclip were also forced out; this was the era when the Holocaust, previously a matter largely ignored by history, was made central to America, and men with any connection, no matter how tenuous, to persecution of Jews were no longer welcome, whatever their contributions had been. (Ward even makes negative reference to the “Jewish Mafia,” both within NASA and within the space community as a whole.) Von Braun quit NASA in 1972.

That was pretty much it for him. He worked briefly in private industry, for Fairchild Industries. But then his failure to address intestinal polyps caught up with him, and after some years of decline, he died of cancer in 1977. On his simple gravestone, he has only his name and a citation to Psalms 19:1. “The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament showeth his handiwork.”

He left very little behind. Nothing of great interest or import has happened since in space exploration. For decades, we have been fed propaganda to cover up this now-obvious fact. We were told the Space Shuttle was the stepping stone to further achievements, then the so-called International Space Station, and both of those petered out with nothing at all of value accomplished. I can remember every President from Ronald Reagan on occasionally making grand promises about some new project or other, none of which ever arrived, or even made any progress toward fulfillment. A few robotic missions have caused a buzz, but none of them were part of any larger plan, or led to anything more. And we have now reached the stage of farce, where NASA’s Artemis program, supposedly directed at putting us on the Moon again, uses a bloated, stupid, archaic rocket that will never accomplish anything of the sort, and proudly states as its main goal that it “will land the first woman and first person of color on the Moon.” Barf. This is just a fantasy, the sort of thing that might have been depicted in the movie Idiocracy.

Ah, but you say, what about Elon Musk? He (although a very different man than von Braun) makes new, better rockets fly in the grand old style, and his goal of getting to Mars is the same as von Braun’s. This is the wildcard, for the great man theory of history is the only theory of history with any basis, and Musk is the only man visible on the scene who may make a reboot of von Braun’s dreams possible. The problem is that as matters stand Musk will not be permitted by the Regime to succeed. He realizes that, and I expect he will do something about it, if the Regime does not kill him first. (It does not matter if going to Mars is a stupid goal; even if true, that is totally irrelevant here.)

What would it look like, if Musk wins his Ragnarok with the Regime, and becomes free to do as he pleases to achieve his life goal, getting to Mars? What would it take for us to reboot an actual space exploration program—either a manned space program that accomplishes something new, not just a clownish repetition of what we already did years ago, or a coherent robotic space program designed to offer both profit, through various types of mining, and the possibility of follow-up by men where robots go first?

It would take money, and not money spent in the corrupt and societally-pointless way it is today, but tightly focused on action and accomplishment. . . . [Review continues as first comment.]

[Ami Morrison · Rating 5 out of 5]

The biography of von Braun, indispensable man to the beginning of the great space race, and brilliant rocket scientist. A true visionary and genius. The book is written by a friend and journalist who covered von Braub's career for several decades. Lot's of personal quotes from friends, family, and colleuges, and of couse, the man himself, von Braun. A very optimistic and passionate man, who had a childhood dream of sending man in to space, and then spent decades making it come true. Modern day space travel owes so much to Wernher, a true pioneer in the history of space flight. Excellent book. lots of info. A great read for any fans of space travel and the history of space flight. Last 2 chapters were super depressing though. D:

[Jeremiah · Rating 3 out of 5]

A rather uninteresting biography of a very interesting man

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyable. Gives a very details and fair portrayal of Dr. von Braun's life.

[Brooke Urzendowski · Rating 4 out of 5]

Even with the dullest of writers or interpretations, we are dealing with one of the most intriguing individuals of the 20th century, in my opinion. So, I am likely biased and inclined to rate any biography of von Braun as high. This will likely only appeal to two kinds of individuals: 1) those interested in learning more about von Braun (myself) or 2) those interested in learning more about NASA/rocket/space history. It was a compelling defense of von Braun’s character and legacy. Bob Ward, the author, clearly admired von Braun and sought to highlight his “hero of US space” reputation (which include being the man who literally put American men on the moon via his Saturn V rocket in the infamous Apollo mission with Neil Armstrong, sending the first US satellite to orbit, and being regarded as one of the “founding fathers” of US space exploration with NASA), while also subtly pointing out the irony that he began his career as an official Nazi SS member who created Hitler’s “secret weapon” V-2 rocket missile that destroyed London. A fuller biography might include more first-hand accounts from von Braun’s critics or concentration camp survivors who provided the slave labor for the production of his missiles. Despite this, he truly was considered an American hero, genius, celebrity, close friends with Walt Disney and JFK, and held the respect and friendship of many scientists and politicians.

A few excerpts from this biography that highlight von Braun’s life of contradictions:

[in the early 1930’s while fundraising for German government support] as von Braun remembered it: “I said, ‘I bet you that the first man to walk on the Moon is alive today somewhere on this Earth!’” It so happened that Neil Armstrong was then an infant in Ohio.

[regarding the appointment of von Braun as NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center director] President Eisenhower presumably recognized the irony of having a center named by him, the wartime supreme Allied commander in Europe, to honor another great U.S military leader in WWII (George Marshall), and having that centers first director being a prominent enemy in that war.

[media coverage of von Brauns death] Press reaction in London to his death was, perhaps surprisingly, balanced. After all, little more than a generation before, his V-2 missiles had killed British civilians, destroyed properties, and generally caused havoc there late in WWII. And yet, all nine of the major London newspapers recognized von Braun as a figure of history, one who led the way to the Moon and beyond.

[in his own defense of wartime complicity] “When your country is at war, when friends are dying, when your family is in constant danger, when bombs are bursting around you and you lose your home, the concept of a just war becomes very vague and remote and you strive to inflict on the enemy as much or more than you and your relatives and friends have suffered.”

[Finn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I didn't know very much about von Braun prior to this book, just that he and his Peenemünde team we're largely behind the success of Saturn V, and that he was quite well known during the Apollo-era. But after reading Dr. Space, i learnt that he was so much more than just an amazing engineer. He was a leader, a father, he had charisma and kindness, and he made his dreams come true for himself and for all mankind, with a drive, intelligence and passion unprecedented ever since in the field of rocketry in any country on earth. The book starts, naturally, from his early life in Germany where it was quite clear already at a young age to his parents that he was quite a prodigy and destined to do great things. It covers the pre-war years and lead-up to Peenemünde where the V2 development really took off, very well, and the years after operation Paperclip even better. I can say this is without a doubt my favorite biography, and if you're a person such as myself with interest in any or all the fields this book covers with his life story (those mostly being history, astronomy, rocketry, weaponry and the second world war), i cannot praise it enough. 5/5

[Alysia · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn't know much about Wernher Von Braun, so this book was a good read for me. There is a lot we may never know about his Nazi past or all of his motivations. But I felt that this book was a good balanced portrayal and it drew on as many historical documents as possible to give an accurate look at his life. He is someone who also wondered about his past and his place in history and tried as hard as he could to give the world all of his talent to take humankind to the moon.

I only gave it two stars, because at times, it did get a little mundane and I wished it had more information as to the actual rocket research that the Huntsville team led. But overall, it is a good space read.

[Joe · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a wonderful book to read. I was aware of Von Braun before reading this, and after a trip to Huntsville, decided that I wanted to know more. This book did not disappoint! Bob Ward's extensive notes and references show that this is a very well researched effort.

I remove one star due to some chapters in the book which break the timeline and to add details of the personal life of Von Braun and the coworkers. I found this information interesting, but it skipped forward and backward in time to keep it contained in a single chapter. I would rather have seen these stories interspersed with that of the main story ark.

[Carlos José Zilveti Arce M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bob Ward awarded us with a compelling biography of one of the key guys of the Space race. Dr. Braun is a German born American hero, how unlikely it seems? Everybody who has interest in how the space race has developed, how the Americans have got to be leading and have landed in the Moon first, should read this book. Maybe Bob Ward was a strong admirer of Dr. Braun and this fact shadowed us Mr. Braun's mishaps and his human side of failures, but it's of less relevance.

[Mark D. Schnittman · Rating 5 out of 5]

A physicist, an engineer, and the genius who envisioned the entire space program 40 years before it occurred, he was also a character and a great man. Forever remembered for his brief unfortunate affiliation with the nazi party, this is someone who deserved much more than what we gave him in return. A mind like this occurs only once in a century. Well written, this is the amazing story of an amazing man.

[Laura Leilani · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well written book about an amazing man. Lots of interviews with people who knew Von Braun provided the quotes and facts. I found this to be an unbiased account.
Like other people, I had a negative view of Nazis brought to America to work for us, but this book broadened my thinking.

This book also showed how a single person can change the world. Without this man’s passion and drive I doubt we would have made it to the moon. Inspiring read!

[Otso Rasimus · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dr. Space is a good book about a great person. Wernher von Braun's life certainly was an interesting one, he held interest in a wide variety of things down here on Earth while pushing for something more. Also achieving more than most of us.

The biography is only let down a little by the structure. Most of it follows a strict timeline, but then at some points the story confusingly jumps backwards and forwards. I guess this was mostly because those chapters are a complete piece of something specific, but it still confuses the reader a little.

[Bastiaan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wernher was technically smart, disciplined, charismatic and an amazing leader. He was probably the single individual most responsible for landing men on the moon. I like his go-get-it attitude, his unrelenting drive to accomplish the things he sets his mind to. He has an ethically troubled history but I think he has done more good for humanity than bad. It was really interesting reading about his life and the dawn of the Space Age.

5.0

[Andrew P · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great biography of a truly extraordinary man. Werner is an inspiration for everyone to lead a life full of adventure, study, and sport. His contributions to the US Space Program are unmatched. I hope to one day have a similar breadth and depth of experiences and knowledge that lead to life well lived. Tragically, Dr Von Braun is a cautionary tale on the importance of never postponing health problems.

[Naveed Rahman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting read, gave an insightful look into Wernher von Braun's life. More of a biography than a technical overview, but still gave a very good look into how the launch vehicle design came to be under the direction of von Braun and how he was seen in the world.

[Angus Cheng · Rating 5 out of 5]

Okay this was a long one. Very interesting, extremely detailed.

[Vince · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mainly in defense of Wernher von Braun wartime activities. Not much technical detail about his work.

[Ram · Rating 3 out of 5]

There aren't many extensive details as I expected, but a good one to read about Werner.
Of course, author absolutely adores Werner; please keep that in mind while reading.

[Trish · Rating 2 out of 5]

I've finally finished this! I got quite bogged down in the middle, as the reading start date can testify!

[Richard Buro · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dr. Space is a biography focused on the life of Wernher von Braun, whose lifelong desire was to explore space either vicariously through his rocket designs or his designs becoming engineering reality. This is the story of one man's dream, stolen for a time by the worst of all regimes of all time, the Third Reich of Adolf Hitler. Dr. Von Braun was forced to use his intellect, drive, and exceptional prowess at making large flying missiles that could carry a crew of people in the distant future, but the rockets he would help build would find the worst of all places to land -- on the enemy of Adolf Hitler lying only thirty miles or so across the English Channel. While he did as he was directed, and his workers followed kind, Dr. Von Braun really wanted to build rockets with the ability and power to place mankind into space and to other worlds in peace as explorers of the new, different environments to be encountered there.

Yes, his first rockets were military in design and construction. The rockets he would build after the war would be to carry men and instruments into orbit around the earth, around the Moon, and hopefully one day in the future to land on the Moon, and eventually the environs of other planets in the solar system. Dr. Von Braun did work for the American Military for several years until John F. Kennedy in his 1961 Inaugural Address, challenging the Nation to send an American mission to the Moon and return the astronauts safely to the Earth. Although he never lived to see that event, Dr. Von Braun took the address statements and made them his reason for being. He was able to enjoy the flight of Apollo 11, when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first American space crew to land on the Moon, returning safely to Earth. They fulfilled President Kennedy's charge, five years, five months after it was made, fatefully ended in Dealy Plaza, Dallas, TX. Dr. Von Braun was present to see their departure from Cape Kennedy, now renamed as Cape Canaveral.

Dr. Von Braun was pleased with the teams with whom he worked. They all shared a desire to accomplish the mission at hand, and they were relentless in finding the safest, most robust vehicle upon which man or machine would carry out the tasks and develop the skills to carry forward with the new missions to come.

Well written by Mr. Bob Ward, a renown aerospace author, completed with a superb foreword by John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth and the oldest American to fly on the International Space Station.

[Jovany Agathe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well-known as the leader of the American rocket team, which sought the launch astronauts into space, Wernher von Braun initially designed rockets for his native country of Germany during World War II.

[Eric · Rating 3 out of 5]

I just finished this and must admit to not knowing too much about Dr. von Braun. In that sense, this book was helpful in terms of an introduction to who he was and what he did. As a study on who he was and what he did, this falls pretty short. The book is clearly well researched and has extensive notes and sources, but it reads like a list of accomplishments and projects with an occasional anecdote, story, or quote to show what a great and charismatic guy he was.

The author acknowledges there were issues with some of his relationships, especially some on Capitol Hill and within NASA, but these are kind of brushed off and never really explored. He mentions the controversy and displeasure of many over von Braun's Nazi affiliation and membership, but kind of dismisses this with a few quotes from friends and associates.

I guess I'm trying to say there's no real in-depth analysis of anything or anyone, not even really the accomplishments and successes he had. Very interesting introduction to a visionary leader that drove the space program for so long, but really left me wanting more than just a nice long resume with recommendations and friendly quotes.

[Dustin · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you already know who Wernher von Braun is, and what his contributions to the world were, then this biography will add much, much more to your understanding of the man. If you don't know much about him, you will by the time you're done. I thought it was a very well rounded biography. It's balanced, feels objective, and is rich with detail. Very readable. This was an iconic figure of the twentieth century worth taking some time to read about.

[Joe · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very entertaining (at times) and very interesting (for someone who cares about the history of space / rockets / science / missile development) throughout. It is a fairly objective look at Dr. von Braun's life, work, and experiences.
It was very enjoyable to read and provided some insight into what went on behind the scenes in America's development of a space exploration program.

[Spencerdan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just goes to show what you can do when you are really captured by an idea.
From a mediocre student with a 'fire in the belly,' to a world class scientist responsible for creating Hitlers V2 projects to putting a man on the moon.

[Christopher · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent biography of an excellent man.

[Rick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book! Enjoyed it immensely! Very interesting individual with a complex life. Thanks Lel!