Well, it would seem that SC now has more snow than we do!! :-) We had a gentle drizzle on and off yesterday, and by the looks of it, it will continue today. Needless to say, with the rain and the warmth, all the snow is gone. But never fear, we are expected to have more starting Thursday evening.
My question yesterday asked a bit of an odd question, and I am taking a Kevin Bacon approach with degrees of separation to get from my birthday to NASA moon rockets. Therefore, I need to tell you about the middle part of this equation.
Late in the week before last, I received an email about a German man who had died who had worked for NASA for some number of years. Based on his age and circumstances, I figured he was one of the many German scientists who went to either Russia or the USA after World War II. (For Germany, this brain drain must have been hard to overcome, but they did seem to succeed nonetheless.) His name was Konrad Dannenberg. I started to research him a bit to find out more about him, which I will share with you now.
Konrad Dannenberg was born on August 5th (my birthday), 1912, in a small town in eastern Germany called Weißenfels, but he didn't live there long. His family moved to Hannover in 1914. As a youth, he was able to attend a lecture by a pioneer in space technology, and from then on, Konrad was hooked. He joined a local amateur rocketeers group, and in college he studied mechanical engineering, focusing on diesel fuel injection. (This is interesting to me as my husband's former job at his current company was diesel fuel injection, and my husband is also a mechanical engineer. It just goes to show that being a rocket scientist can have many paths.)
During World War II, he was drafted into the army and served first in what is now the Czech Republic and then as part of the initial movement against France. He was then allowed to serve as a civilian at the army's research center in Peenemünde. It was here that his ability as a rocket scientist was really put to use. At this facility, the Nazi V-2 rocket, the first ballistic missile, was a major part of his work, working alongside the famous Wernher von Braun (who also worked on the NASA moon rockets.) The V-2 rocket was the first man made object to reach outer space. The facility was also the site of the first closed-circuit TV which was used to follow the test rockets. Although the rockets were tested and had begun being used actively in the war, Germany lost the war before the rockets could make a significant impact. Since the war ended badly for relations between the two allied nations of the USA and the Soviet Union, the USA arranged for 118 of the most talented scientists to come to live and work in America. This mission by the US was known as Operation Paperclip in an effort to keep the military technology out of the hands of the USSR (kids - why was Russia also known as the Soviet Union in the past and what does USSR stand for?)
The scientists worked for the American military out of Fort Bliss, Texas, where they perfected the V-2 missiles and trained army and General Electric personnel about the technology. The rockets were actually tested at the White Sands Proving Ground and became the blueprint for the Redstone missiles, a major part of the Cold War arsenal and first rockets used for the nuclear tests by the US, which Dannenberg also worked on from Huntsville, Alabama.
(For an interesting book for adults to read on other Germans who were doing US military rocket science helping to effectively end World War II in Asia, check out Los Alamos by Joseph Kanon. Although it is a fictional story that takes place during World War II, it uses the real people and events of the Manhattan Project as it's backdrop. This project was emphasized during WWII due to the suspicion that the rockets and bombs being developed in Germany were of atomic and nuclear nature.)
Shortly after 1958, when NASA was created, Dannenberg began working for NASA in Huntsville, where he worked on the Saturn rockets being developed for the space and lunar programs. He was awarded the NASA Exceptional Service Medal for his work on the Saturn 5 rocket, the largest rocket ever constructed and that successfully took Americans to the moon. He later also worked on the precursors to the Space Shuttle and the International Space Station.
After retirement from NASA, he took his expertise back to his roots, working as a lecturer and mentor at the Space Camp program for youth that, like him, might become the space scientists of the future. Today, the Konrad Dannenberg Scholarship, which was established in 1992 by the Alabama Space and Rocket Center in Dannenberg's honor, grants free tuition to the Space Academy. He also taught at The University of Tennessee Space Institute in his retirement and received many awards for his teaching.
On February 16th, his life came to a conclusion at the ripe old age of 96. In reflecting back on his life and experiences, based on an interview he did in 1999, it is evident that all of his work really was a man living his dream of making the ultimate amateur rocket.
The word for today is rocket: die Rakete (rah kay teh).
The question for today is "Whose afraid of the big, bad wolf?"
Auf Wiedersehen,
Frau Spitzer
