Description

Wernher von Braun March 23 1912 June 16 1977 was a German aerospace engineer and space architect He was the leading figure in the development of rocket technology in Nazi Germany and a pioneer of space technology and science in the United States After World War II von Braun was secretly moved to the US along with roughly 1600 other German scientists engineers and technicians as part of Operation Paperclip He worked for the United States Army on an intermediaterange ballistic missile IRBM program and he developed the rockets that launched the United States first space satellite Explorer 1 He served as director of the Marshall Space Flight Center and as the chief architect of the Saturn V super heavylift launch vehicle that propelled the Apollo spacecraft to the Moon In 1955 von Braun became a naturalized citizen of the United States In 1975 von Braun received the National Medal of Science This recording is from Dr Von Brauns speech at the 1st Annual SOLE Symposium September 13 1966 in Huntsville Alabama