Saturn V - History

History

The origins of the Saturn V rocket begin with the US government choosing Wernher von Braun to be one of about seven hundred German scientists in Operation Paperclip, a program created by President Truman in September 1946. It was intended to bring these scientists and their expertise to the United States, thereby giving America an edge in the Cold War.

Von Braun was put into the rocket design division of the Army due to his direct involvement in the creation of the V-2 rocket. Between 1945 and 1958, his work was restricted to conveying the ideas and methods behind the V-2 to the American engineers. Despite Von Braun's many articles on the future of space rocketry, the US Government continued funding Air Force and Naval rocket programs to test their Vanguard missiles despite numerous costly failures. It was not until the 1957 Soviet launch of Sputnik atop an R-7 intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) capable of carrying a thermonuclear warhead to the US, that the Army and the government started taking serious steps towards putting Americans in space. Finally, they turned to von Braun and his team, who during these years created and experimented with the Jupiter series of rockets. The Juno I was the rocket that launched the first American satellite in January 1958, and part of the last-ditch plan for NACA (the predecessor of NASA) to get its foot in the Space Race. The Jupiter series was one more step in von Braun's journey to the Saturn V, later calling that first series "an infant Saturn".