On March 9, 1955, forty-two million Americans - a quarter of the then US population - clung to screens to see the new Disney television series. There was no dancing mouse, princesses in danger, or orphaned animals. Man in Space was hosted by a pleasant, warm and friendly rocket engineer laying out his vision for the future of space exploration. The man who designed the V-2 rocket also helped America reach the moon. And he had much deeper plans, far ahead of his time.
Surrounded by beautifully sculpted models of spacecraft and futuristic artwork, Wernher von Braun spoke to the viewer about his plan to build a rocket capable of accommodating passengers in the next 10 years. The program included cute dramatic animations and disturbing orchestral scores, full-size spacesuits and detailed diagrams.
Ten years earlier, von Braun led the development of Hitler's V-2 missiles, ballistic missiles built by slave labor and aimed at destroying civilians across Europe. Now he was a role model in the American space program and a welcome guest in homes across the country.
Opinions about the German rocket engineer are perhaps even more divided today than they were in the 1950s. Some historians argue that he was an immoral opportunist - exploiting Hitler's desire for futuristic weapons in order to satisfy his own ambitions of space exploration. For many, he remains a hero - a space visionary who won the race to the moon and paved the way for America to the stars.
Whatever you think about this person, the fact remains: 60 years after those broadcasts, the tracks still lead to the von Braun paradigm. Simply put, these are the steps the engineer mapped out for humanity in space, with a shuttle and space station, followed by missions to the Moon and Mars. In a way, he can be compared with Tsiolkovsky: a man who was also ahead of his time.
“He was trying to give us an architecture for how to make space travel possible,” explains Michael Newfeld, senior curator at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC and author of three books and many articles on von Braun for the BBC. "He has been obsessed with the moon since childhood."
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“His plan had a huge impact in the 60s and continues to live,” says Newfeld. "When it came to the Moon, the project that he inspired, there was no need to strictly follow the chain of shuttles, Moon, Mars, but for many NASA engineers it was a logical program for human space exploration."
Shuttle without station
Throughout the 1960s, von Braun was involved in the development of the giant Saturn 5 rocket, which was supposed to take a man to the moon. But in the minds of some of the American space agency, it was sabotage.
“NASA was trying to get back to the scenario,” says Newefel. "In the late 1960s, the Space Task Group recommended that President Nixon build a space shuttle and a space station, and then prepare for expeditions back to the moon and Mars."
With the victory in the lunar race and with the cuts in budgets, all that came out of it was the shuttle program - a reusable spacecraft that was supposed to serve the space station. But without a space station. "Not really an excuse to get one," says Newfeld. And yet, the von Braun paradigm remained close to very, very many.
Von Braun died of cancer at age 65 in 1977, four years before the first space shuttle took off. But his plan lives on. “NASA went back to the idea of a space station, and then President Bush stood on the steps of this museum in 1989 and said that we were going to return to the Moon and Mars,” says Newfeld. "However, it was also a failure."
In the minds of many, however, von Braun's step-by-step movement to Mars has not gone anywhere. "NASA keeps coming back to it," says Newfeld. - "What do we do now?" - this is the eternal problem of NASA, because the future of space travel has always remained something like the dreams of believers."
But there are a lot of such believers, and now, perhaps, they have every reason to be optimists. NASA has an entire department dedicated to these future steps.
"Von Braun opened this office in the 1960s," says Les Johnson, technical advisor for advanced ideas at NASA's Marshall Space Center in Alabama. - Our task is to continue what he started - a direct hereditary line of what he did.
I have a 1964 conference report that went before the Moon - and even before Project Gemini - and it already told its people to start planning a trip to Mars. If I could compare this with what we are doing now, he set out most of the issues we are struggling with now in 1964.”
Strong leadership
The parallels are striking. Johnson's office recently faced the challenges of building a new Space Launch System (SLS), the first rocket since Von Brown's Saturn 5 capable of lifting humans out of low-Earth orbit, which will likely allow us to return to the Moon and take us to Mars.
Johnson believes that, in addition to von Braun's visionary ideas, we should also admire his leadership skills. “Whenever you have a team of people working towards a common goal - whether it’s a team of ten in a small business or tens of thousands, like Project Apollo - you need someone to oversee each goal. step, have a common vision of everything, says Johnson. "This is the difference between a leader and a manager, if you do not have a leader who sets the course, the manager (literally the manager) will have nothing to manage."
If we ignore the inconvenient fact that America has been thrown a couple of steps back from the lunar program, it turns out that we continue to follow the von Braun paradigm. The US has built a shuttle and space station, now it's time to travel to the Moon (again) and Mars.
This was the official agenda during last year's launch of the new Orion spacecraft and the ongoing development of SLS. The new head of the European Space Agency, Jan Werner, also talked about his plans to build a settlement on the moon.
Johnson believes that space is the future. "We must move, explore, go beyond the Earth."
Johnson, however, warns about the big picture. “A visionary person is a weak point, so I get nervous when someone says 'a great leader will get us all out of this.' Indeed, unlike von Braun's days, deep space exploration is now more likely to be international in nature - including the United States, Europe, Russia, Japan, Canada, and maybe even China and India. Sharing responsibilities and a diversified approach can be a stronger foundation for the future.
And yet it is remarkable that there is more to be said about von Braun 60 years after those Disney shows and almost 40 years after his death. Even private space race rivals Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk mention von Braun more than anyone else.
“I'm surprised they haven't forgotten about him yet,” admits Newfeld. - This question is partly a space seer and partly a Nazi - he is either a bad Nazi or our space hero, and the fact that he can be both at the same time somehow does not fit into my head. He popularized space in the 50s and 60s. He remains one of the inspirers of our vision for future space programs."
How can you not remember the old Disney proverb: when you make a wish for a star, your dreams come true. Once.
Ilya Khel