The Man Who Sent Humans To The Moon
By Boris Vasilev

     American first steps into space can be largely credited to the dream of one man, Dr. Werner von Braun. His love for space exploration started at a early age. When he was 12, he created a rocket powered wagon and by 21 he started drawing up plans for a rocket that might some day take humans to the moon. Von Braun's dream of sending people into space however would be put on hold for almost 40 years.

     Von Braun along with so many other scientists living in Germany in the late 1930's became swept up in their turmoil as Hitler and the Fascist Nazi Regime came into power. He was quickly put to work by the German military where he continued to lay the groundwork for modern rocketry.

      His work in Germany culminated the creation of the first fully functional Rocket, the V-2. Von Braun never agreed with using rockets for military purposes. His true goal was to use his rockets to send people into outer space.

     In 1945 as the noose was closing around Hitler's 2000 Year Reich, Dr. Werner von Braun and hundreds of other German scientists turned themselves in to the American allied forces. He was hired by the American military to continue his work on rockets. In 1950 he was sent to the Redstone Arsenal in Alabama to build a long range nuclear missile.

In 1961 during President John F. Kennedy's inaugural speech he tasked the American scientific community to place a man on the moon by the end of the decade. A variant of the Redstone Rocket would kick start the US space program and carry the first Americans into space. Dr. Werner von Braun was put in charge of NASA with the task of creating a rocket for the Apollo project that would take 3 humans to the moon. The result was the mighty Saturn V rocket. In 1969 Dr. Werner von Braun's childhood dream of sending men to the moon was realized as Apollo 11 powered Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Mike Collins to the moon and into history.