”Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down
That’s not my department,” says Wernher von Braun
—Tom Lehrer
In an October auction, sketches, diagrams, and letters by rocket scientist Wernher von Braun fetched $132 000, far more than the $10 000–$25 000 anticipated. “The whole field of collecting 20th-century scientists and especially physicists has really exploded,” says Catherine Williamson, director of fine books and manuscripts at Bonhams, the international auctioneer that sold the von Braun lot.
As technical director of the German liquid-fuel rocket program under Adolf Hitler, von Braun was responsible for the V-2 rocket, which was fired on London, Antwerp, and other cities in 1944 and 1945. At the end of the war, von Braun, with more than 100 members of his Third Reich rocket team and many other Nazi scientists and engineers, was brought to the US as part of the military’s secret...
