In the Collier’s series, von Braun insisted that an orbiting space station was a critical first step for space exploration. From 1952 to 1954, with the help of splashy color illustrations, he and a panel of other experts provided a glimpse of the impending Space Age in Collier’s magazine, presented as an eight-part series titled “Man Will Conquer Space Soon.” From 1955 to 1957, von Braun also helped shape Walt Disney’s three-part television film series on space exploration, starting with the episode “Man in Space.” He wrote a highly technical novel about a journey to Mars that failed to find a publisher. But in his spare time, he sought to shift the public’s opinion. Von Braun’s new day job was to design missiles for the U.S. There was just one problem: In the immediate post-war America that the ex-Nazi engineers were whisked away to, spaceflight was still widely seen as science fiction. Army in Germany in 1945, he and his engineers intrigued interrogators with visions such as erecting giant mirrors in space that would be able to change the weather or incinerate cities. But for von Braun, missile design was a prelude outer space exploration awaited. These rockets, however, did not help the Nazis explore space they exploded in London and Antwerp during the last months of World War II, killing about 5,000 people. Pursuing this goal, in the 1930s and 1940s von Braun led the design of the Nazi V-2 rockets, the world’s first long-range guided missiles. And no one better embodied the tension between militarism and the high ideals of spaceflight than Wernher von Braun.Īs a teenager in the 1920s, von Braun was inspired by German-Romanian space visionary Hermann Oberth’s description of humans leaving the planet to explore the solar system. ![]() ![]() While robotic rovers on Mars symbolize our thirst for scientific knowledge and the International Space Station exemplifies international cooperation, peaceful and purely scientific pursuits in outer space have always contended with militaristic ambitions. and allied interests in space.” To justify the establishment of the Space Force, military planners and members of its predecessor, Air Force Space Command, frequently offer the mantra: “Space is no longer a benign environment.”īut space has never been a benign environment - and not just because of the bug-eyed monsters imagined by early science fiction writers. military with an insignia shaped much like a Star Trek communicator, was launched in December 2019 with a continuing mission “to protect U.S. The Space Force, a new branch of the U.S.
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