The strange contagion of a dream

Wernher von Braun was one of the key figures in the history of spaceflight by convincing governments to support his visions of space exploration. (credit: NASA)

In the midst of the most destructive war in history, Wernher von Braun was tasked with making it even worse by developing a ballistic missile to rain down on London: the V-2 rocket. Unfortunately for his masters, Von Brauns personal ambitions for the V-2 were somewhat different. He saw the rockets potential to achieve orbit and carry the first artificial satellite in human history. But every time he proposed this idea, his SS commanders made clear (in increasingly menacing tones) that the Fuhrer wanted a weapon, not a science fiction toy.

Von Brauns clever insubordinationssiphoning resources off from the main weapons program to pursue spaceflight research while making enough progress on the V-2 to remain credible with his superiorswas an act of high-altitude tightrope-walking at its best. He risked his life with every passing day this went on, and it became clear that his superiors eventually intended to kill the V-2 scientists to prevent the Americans or Russians from acquiring their expertise. Only by sensing the right moment and fleeing with fake documents were he and a number of his people able to escape to the American side.

Under a banner of destruction, with the strictest orders to focus only on military applications, one man somehow built, in a few brief years, the foundations for decades of peaceful space exploration, and survived to explain himself to history. Von Brauns dream never made a dent in the madness of the Third Reich, but it formed a virulent spore that would survive to infect both of the superpower heirs to his technology.

From the moment the US and Soviet Union possessed V-2 hardware, both states saw only the strategic weapons the Nazis had intended, and missed or ignored the deeper potential for more than a decade. Seeing the power to leave Earth, the banal thinking of soldiers and bureaucrats could only bookend it with an explosive return on the heads of their enemies.

Von Braun, now working for the United States, no longer had to hide his loftier ambitions, but was careful to avoid alienating his new military hosts by seeming over-enthusiastic for ideas they still didnt understand. They saw him as a strange nerd with odd fixations who might, if handled properly, give them a strategic advantage over Soviet weaponry; and he, in turn, saw them as parochial bumpkins who had to be handheld toward realizing the obvious about the technology now in their hands. The Germans dreams were given short shrift, but they were tolerated as personal quirks.

Meanwhile, the Soviets had to comb their vast, secretive empire for anyone with the expertise to understand and replicate Von Brauns captured work, and the best they could find was Sergei Koroleva man who had spent the last several years toiling in the Siberian gulag under false political accusations. Korolevs experiences and dispositions were strangely symmetric with Von Brauns in the late history of the V-2 program. His government demanded intercontinental missiles, threatened the severest personal consequences if he were to fail, and misunderstood, ignored, or were actively suspicious of, unorthodox ideas like spaceflight.

Korolev kept his head down until he could begin showing results, built up credibility and influence within the government, and sought dual-use synergies between what the Soviet army demanded and the space rockets he wanted to build. His role in the Soviet rocket program became so central, and his talents so valued, that his very identity became a top-level state secret, and he would be known until his death simply as Chief Designer.

Only from this high position was he able to, just barely, whisper subtle suggestions into the ears of the Soviet high command about the possibility for using their weapons for spaceflight. A historical moment for the Soviets was just a push of a button away, he told them, if the Politburo would allow ita moment that would invoke the envy and emulation of the entire world, without the guilt of doing anything unjust or warlike. At the risk of mere embarrassment if they failed, if they succeeded the world would stand in awe.

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The strange contagion of a dream