Von Braun a US citizen

WI Werner's parents had emigrated to the US?

How likely it is that he would still have had the interest in rockets?

Is it possible that he would have persuaded anyone in the US of a military use for his concepts?

I am inclined to think that there would be less interest in the West. In OTL the V2 was effective to the extent that it was because the Nazis had ceased to be able to do significant damage with crewed aircraft.

By 1944 the allies are not in that position.

Does this delay efforts to go to the Moon?

Does it also alter the Cold War because there might not be ICBMs
 
Von Braun, being brilliant offsprint of some unknown poor immigrants (his Baron father lost all his possessions in turmoil resulting from Poznan being transferred from Germany to newly independent Poland), struggles for years to get enough money to pay for his education (he graduated High School in 1930 in the thick of the Great Depression). All those years he dreams of space flights (dream planted by his mother in his early childhood when she bought 15-cent telescope for him in Woolworth with money she earned by teaching good manners to the American new rich) to distract himself from grim reality. He finally succeeds to get grant by 1935, which allows him to enroll himself to CalTech and join Von Karman's group. They failed to interest US military in their ballistic missiles, as Americans perfected traditional technology and relied on it very much. In 1945 sick Von Karman sends young German speaker to investigate Nazi rocket sites, where they pertected pulsejects and were working on ballistic missiles...
 
I find it hard to believe that, if Von Brain still has an interest in space flight and actually makes a career out of it, he doesn't hook up with Goddard at some point. After all, while inspect a captured V2, one of his students commented that it looked like one of his rockets.


Also you would have Von Braun's considerable talents as a salesman in favor of an American rocket program. Maybe he could get some kind of program going during the worst period of the air war before the Luftwaffe was broken?
 
America was pretty close minded to rocket science. There were brilliant minds like Goddard, but they did not have a good environment to do their research. Goddard was practically broken by his critics, notably the New York Times. He was basically accused of being stupid by fellow scientists for thinking rockets can move in the vacuum of space.
 
America was pretty close minded to rocket science. There were brilliant minds like Goddard, but they did not have a good environment to do their research. Goddard was practically broken by his critics, notably the New York Times. He was basically accused of being stupid by fellow scientists for thinking rockets can move in the vacuum of space.

Not fellow scientists, but some publication. Was it the New York Times, or Time magazine, one or the other.

And it is still likely that he gets together with Goddard, conductive environment or no. Assuming he still goes for rockets anyway....
 
Not fellow scientists, but some publication. Was it the New York Times, or Time magazine, one or the other.

And it is still likely that he gets together with Goddard, conductive environment or no. Assuming he still goes for rockets anyway....

Yeah, it was the New York Times. Their article pouring scorn on Goddard "expressed disbelief that Professor Goddard actually "does not know of the relation of action to reaction, and the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react"... Goddard, the Times declared, apparently suggesting bad faith, "only seems to lack the knowledge ladled out daily in high schools.""

They printed a retraction, though... the day after Apollo 11 left for the Moon, 49 years later. It was wonderfully phrased: "... it is now definitely established that a rocket can function in a vacuum as well as in an atmosphere. The Times regrets the error."

Prompt correction there! Only a couple of decades too late (Goddard was long dead by that point).

Anyway, yes. in this changed environment Werner may not be interested in rockets at all. Assuming he was, it would be nice to see them hook up, and form some kind of partnership. It does seem that Goddard was very secretive precisely because of harsh criticism such as that of the NY Times. If he meets Werner early enough, maybe he can provide a little more confidence.
 
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