Wernher Von Braun Quotes

One good test is worth a thousand expert opinions.

Basic research is what I’m doing when I don’t know what I am doing.

The best computer is a man, and it’s the only one that can be mass-produced by unskilled labor.

I have learned to use the word 'impossible' with the greatest caution.

The rocket worked perfectly except for landing on the wrong planet.

I'm convinced that before the year 2000 is over, the first child will have been born on the moon.

All one can really leave one's children is what's inside their heads. Education, in other words, and not earthly possessions, is the ultimate legacy, the only thing that cannot be taken away.

You can’t have a baby in one month by getting nine women pregnant.

Our sun is one of a 100 billion stars in our galaxy. Our galaxy is one of billions of galaxies populating the universe. It would be the height of presumption to think that we are the only living thing in that enormous immensity.

It [the rocket] will free man from his remaining chains, the chains of gravity which still tie him to this planet. It will open to him the gates of heaven.

We can lick gravity, but sometimes the paperwork is overwhelming.

By the end of January 1946, 160 Nazi scientists had been secreted into America. The single largest group was comprised of the 115 rocket specialists at Fort Bliss, Texas, led by Wernher von Braun.

Nature does not know extinction; all it knows is transformation. Everything science has taught me, and continues to teach me, strengthens my belief in the continuity of our spiritual existence after death.

Crash programs fail because they are based on the theory that, with nine women pregnant, you can get a baby a month.

And don't tell me that man doesn't belong out there [space]. Man belongs wherever he wants to go — and he’ll do plenty well when he gets there.

I have learned to use the world ‘impossible’ with the greatest caution.

Wernher von Braun. As his designs, built on Goddard’s inventions, rained ruin on London, von Braun’s genius for rocketry became all too obvious. He gave Adolf Hitler

Architect Wernher Von Braun had this to say on the matter: “One good test is worth a thousand expert opinions.

Nature does not know extinction; all it knows is transformation. Everything science has taught me, and continues to teach me, strengthens my belief in the continuity of our spiritual existence after death. —WERNHER VON BRAUN

You can’t have a baby in one month by getting nine women pregnant

In future utopia will need to hurry to keep up with reality.

In Zukunft wird sich die Utopie beeilen müssen, wenn sie die Realität einholen will.

Conquering the universe one has to solve two problems: gravity and red tape. We could have mastered gravity.

Natura nu cunoaște dispariția. Ea cunoaște doar transformarea. Tot ce m-a învățat știința și mă învață în continuare îmi întărește credința în perpetuarea existenței noastre spirituale după moarte.

Wernher von Braun, who led the Marshall Space Flight Center’s development of the rocket that propelled the moon mission, balanced NASA’s rigid process with an informal, individualistic culture that encouraged constant dissent and cross-boundary communication. Von Braun started “Monday Notes”: every week engineers submitted a single page of notes on their salient issues. Von Braun handwrote comments in the margins, and then circulated the entire compilation. Everyone saw what other divisions were up to, and how easily problems could be raised. Monday Notes were rigorous, but informal.

He didn't say anything. He lay there with his eyes closed for a long time after that, sculling along the surface of the sea of pain a little nearer to his story's end or maybe, if that great eschatologist Wernher Magnus Maximilian Freiherr von Braun turned out to be right, toward story on the opposite shore that was waiting to begin.

Albert Einstein, considered the most influential person of the 20th century, was four years old before he could speak and seven before he could read. His parents thought he was retarded. He spoke haltingly until age nine. He was advised by a teacher to drop out of grade school: “You’ll never amount to anything, Einstein.” Isaac Newton, the scientist who invented modern-day physics, did poorly in math. Patricia Polacco, a prolific children’s author and illustrator, didn’t learn to read until she was 14. Henry Ford, who developed the famous Model-T car and started Ford Motor Company, barely made it through high school. Lucille Ball, famous comedian and star of I Love Lucy, was once dismissed from drama school for being too quiet and shy. Pablo Picasso, one of the great artists of all time, was pulled out of school at age 10 because he was doing so poorly. A tutor hired by Pablo’s father gave up on Pablo. Ludwig van Beethoven was one of the world’s great composers. His music teacher once said of him, “As a composer, he is hopeless.” Wernher von Braun, the world-renowned mathematician, flunked ninth-grade algebra. Agatha Christie, the world’s best-known mystery writer and all-time bestselling author other than William Shakespeare of any genre, struggled to learn to read because of dyslexia. Winston Churchill, famous English prime minister, failed the sixth grade.

At the end of World War II, the U.S. military set up an agency called the Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency, whose mandate was to implement Operation Paperclip, a program in which U.S. military and spies fanned out across Europe, seeking German scientists and engineers to bring home to America. Even before the war with Germany had ended, the Cold War was in full swing, and the U.S. government was desperate not just to obtain the knowledge these men held, but to keep their ideas, research, and abilities out of the hands of the Soviets. President Truman was adamant that no actual Nazis be brought back to the States, but the generals and spies ignored this edict from their ostensible commander-in-chief. When confronted with Nazi war criminals like the infamous Wernher von Braun—inventor of the German V-2 rocket and dedicated exploiter of slave labor, who was personally responsible for flogging and torturing people, and whose program resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands—the army and intelligence services whitewashed records, expunged files, and erased evidence of Nazi Party membership. They not only brought the most evil of criminals back to the United States, but gave them the highest of security clearances.

I’m convinced that none of the important achievements in human history were accomplished before ten-thirty or eleven in the morning!”17

Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing.

Werner Heisenberg Walks into a Bar Werner Heisenberg walks into a bar. The bartender asks, 'What will you have? Heisenberg ponders the question for 30 seconds and says, 'I'm still uncertain. There is a fuzziness in nature, a fundamental limit to what I can know about the behavior of quantum particles in the liquor in that shot glass. On these subatomic scales, the most I can hope for is to calculate probabilities for where the liquor is and how it will behave once it enters my bloodstream.' The bartender says, 'Listen egghead, stop your jabbering. This is not rocket science. Either order a drink or get the fuck out of my bar.' Heisenberg leaves in frustration and at that very moment, in walks the rocket scientist, Wernher von Braun. The bartender grabs his bat from behind the bar and says to himself, 'Achh scheiße, here comes trouble.

Don’t say that he’s hypocritical Say rather that he’s apolitical. Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? “That’s not my department,” says Wernher von Braun.

The joke that made the rounds of NASA was that the Saturn V had a reliability rating of .9999. In the story, a group from headquarters goes down to Marshall and asks Wernher von Braun how reliable the Saturn is going to be. Von Braun turns to four of his lieutenants and asks, “Is there any reason why it won’t work?” to which they answer: “Nein.” “Nein.” “Nein.” “Nein.” Von Braun then says to the men from headquarters, “Gentlemen, I have a reliability of four nines.”]

In 1940, Heinrich Himmler, wanting to extend SS influence to the rocket program, pressured Wernher von Braun into joining the organization despite his lack of political commitment. Von Braun joined chiefly to keep working on his passion, rocketry, but his eventual rise to the rank of Sturmbannführer (major) tainted his reputation and dogged him following the war. A few years later, Arthur Rudolph and several other leading Peenemünde figures began using slave labor at the facility in 1942. Contrary to their later claims that Himmler forced this move on them, their letters and memos at the time indicate nothing but enthusiasm among this group's members for the use of Soviet, Polish, and French POWs for coerced labor.

Research is what I’m doing when I don’t know what I’m doing.” —WERNHER VON BRAUN

The most famous of these scientists was Wernher von Braun.

And yet in less than a year Arthur Rudolph, Georg Rickhey, Wernher von Braun, Major General Walter Dornberger, and other rocket engineers would secretly be heading to America to work. In the last days of World War II few would ever have believed such a thing.

It was very successful, but it fell on the wrong planet.