FATHER OF THE AMERICAN SPACE PROGRAM

This is an original signed drawing of a space ship by Wernher von Braun. The father of the American space program, Von Braun made this drawing for the epochal series “Man will Conquer Space Soon.” This publication played a central role in inspiring a generation of American rocket scientists and convincing the American public of the possibility of space exploration.

In the Second World War, Wernher von Braun headed the German rocket program and was responsible for the development of the V-2 rocket. At war’s end he and his team fled the Soviets and surrendered to the Americans. Soon von Braun and his staff were working on the nascent American ICBM program and developed the nation’s first ballistic missile, the Redstone. The launch of Sputnik (1957) brought fear of Soviet domination of space, and von Braun was the natural choice to develop an orbital launch vehicle. In the coming years von Braun and his team developed ever-larger rockets for the Apollo program, culminating in the mammoth Saturn V that sent Apollo 11 to the moon.

Von Braun’s technical accomplishments alone would have made him the father of the American space program, but he was also the foremost popularizer of the notion of space travel. In October 1951 he helped to organize the First Symposium on Space Flight in New York. Out of that conference arose the Collier’s magazine series “Man will Conquer Space Soon,” featuring articles by Von Braun and other leading figures in the field. The Collier’s series, which ran for eight issues in 1952-54, anticipated and helped make possible the great developments of the American space program and likely influenced John F. Kennedy’s vision of an American presence in space. Apollo space program director Sam Phillips declared that America would not have reached the moon without von Braun’s help.

Von Braun executed this drawing of a spacecraft to ensure that the artists of “Man will Conquer Space Soon” would prepare accurate illustrations. The series covered seemingly every aspect of manned space flight and anticipated many developments including the enormous multi-stage vertical launch vehicle (to become Saturn V), a horizontal landing space ferry (the Space Shuttle), an orbiting space station, a lunar landing, the establishment of a base on the moon, and ultimately a manned expedition to Mars. For the first time Americans had a vision of space travel not out of Buck Rogers but as envisioned by the central figure of the coming Space Age.

This drawing of a space ship is a visionary depiction of the coming Space Age by one of its central figures. Von Braun’s technical drawings are very rare in the market.

$35,000