Yeah, I got one of those.
He was not only one of the greatest minds but visionaries in all of recorded human history, easily one of the most significant figures of the 20th Century and equally indispensable at different periods to both the Third Reich and post-war American hegemon during global conflicts on the scale and level of World War II and Cold War. Just think about that for a second, to be so god damn relevant that it could almost make Albert Einstein blush.
I'm not really bothered about the USSR's admittedly impressive list of 'first's in space' for a couple different reasons and the Space Age did not start with the USA nor USSR, but in Germany during the 1940s with rockets engineered by Von Braun himself.
The V-2 was the first man-made object to cross beyond the Earth's atmosphere as well as photograph it from outer space. The foundation of Soviet rocket program was dependent on V-2 technology and Sergei Korolev's initial R1/R2 rockets were just larger copycats with heavy assistance from engineers they had taken out of Germany as part of their own post-war spoils.
Not only that, but it's worth noting that Wernher von Braun was initially working for the Department of Defense upon immigration to the United States, he wasn't even transferred to NASA until after the Soviet Union had already successfully launched the first satellite and animal into low Earth orbit. Korolev was most definitely brilliant in his own right but a man-rated SHLLV rocket to the moon was and is still is on a completely different level and he was simply no match for WvB.
If all that weren't enough, he's also quite easily the most important and influential popularizer of space exploration in history with everything from numerous features he wrote in Colliers Magazine to his friendship with famed English science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke which in turn inspired creative talents on the caliber of Stanley Kubrick, Pink Floyd, David Bowie and Elton John among others, with works that have become timeless artistic contributions to western culture on the whole. Not to mention he also founded the National Space Institute which was the first non-profit space exploration advocacy group of its kind, later merged with the L5 Society and still going.
Look familiar?
He was awarded the National Medal of Science in 1975 and maybe even should've received the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his work as a Civil Rights activist. It sounds like a complete joke, but the dude actually moved real weight and had an incredible amount of pull at the highest levels. It isn't as if he'd of been out of a job had NASA decided to move the Marshall facility out of Alabama due to its abhorrent record on race - he was the greatest aerospace engineer of
all-time - WvB didn't have to do a damn thing.
God Tier Genius.
