Walter Haeussermann, Rocket Scientist, Dies at 96

Walter Haeussermann, Rocket Scientist, Dies at 96

By DENNIS HEVESI

Published: December 17, 2010



Walter Haeussermann, a leading member of the team of German rocket scientists headed by Wernher von Braun who were brought to the United States after World War II to help develop ballistic missiles, died on Dec. 8 in Huntsville, Ala. He was 96.

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Walter Haeussermann, right, and Wernher von Braun, center, studying part of a Saturn rocket with Clinton Grace, operations manager of an I.B.M. facility in Huntsville, Ala., in the 1960s.


The cause was complications from a fall, said Brooks Moore, who succeeded Dr. Haeussermann as director of NASA’s Astrionics Laboratory at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, where Mr. Haeussermann played a large role in the American space program.
“Dr. Haeussermann was one of von Braun’s leading engineers in the development of guidance and control systems for rockets — from the V-2 in Germany to the Saturn V,” Michael Neufeld, chairman of the space history division at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, said Thursday. “He contributed many ideas that made those rockets a success and helped land Americans on the Moon.”
Dr. Haeussermann had just received his doctorate in electrical engineering in 1939 when he was drafted into the German Army and sent to Peenemünde, the village in Germany where von Braun was working on the V-2 rocket. His expertise in gyroscopes and accelerometers, the sensing devices that control rockets, was essential to the development of the V-2, which in the last months of World War II rained down on London and Antwerp, Belgium.
Three years after the war, Dr. Haeussermann came to the United States under Project Paperclip, the Office of Strategic Services program that was used to recruit more than 100 scientists from Nazi Germany. For two years he worked on the von Braun team at Fort Bliss, Tex. The team was moved to the Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville in 1950.
Dr. Haeussermann was in charge of developing the guidance and control systems for the Redstone, a ballistic missile with a range of about 150 miles, and then the Jupiter, with a range of 1,500 miles.
In 1957, when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the United States became alarmed that it was falling behind in the space race. In response, an enhanced version of the Redstone, which Dr. Haeussermann helped design, was used to launch the first American satellite, Explorer I, on Jan. 31, 1958.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration was created in October 1958, and two years later the von Braun team was transferred to the agency’s new Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville. They were joined by more than 5,000 American scientists, engineers and technicians.
There, Dr. Haeussermann directed the Astrionics Laboratory, which developed the electronic and guidance systems for the Saturn program. Between 1967 and 1973 NASA launched 12 Saturn rockets, including the one that allowed the Apollo 11 astronauts to land on the Moon on July 20, 1969.
Walter Haeussermann was born in Künzelsau, Germany, on March 2, 1914. After graduating from the Technical University at Stuttgart with a degree in electrical engineering, he received a master’s degree and a doctorate from the Technical University of Darmstadt.
Dr. Haeussermann became an American citizen in 1954. He is survived by his wife, Ruth.

 

R.I.P.

 

As an interesting aside that few realize, von Braun didn't use his own rockets or designs, or fuel for the Redstone or later rockets he helped produce. Only the Saturn V was really from his design in the end, and that is probably just an upgraded version of the Hall design. He went to watch a test firing of a liquid fueled rocke designed by an American (Edward Hall) which had been developed at the Rocketdyne section of North American Aviation. He was impressed by the new engine, the gimbaled nozzles, and the non-alcohol based fuel. It was Ed Hall's RF1, a highly refined kerosene and liquid oxygen which propelled that engine. He signed for a few of the prototypes, and took them back to the Redstone crew in Huntsville and went to work improving them.

Ed Hall had developed them off of Robert Goddard's designs, but the new fuel and pumps for it were his alone. As another bizarre twist, his younger brother (Ted Hall) was one of the Soviet spies at the Los Alamos center, unbeknowst to either Ed or the US government. They were both obviously brilliant men, and just went into different areas.

Ed into propullsion of aircraft by conventional, jet, and rocket types, and Ted into nuclear physics. I find it ironic that von Bruan ended up using two American rocket experts for the basis of his own successes, Goddard and Hall, but nobody remembers that.

That exchange of rocket engines from Edward Hall and Rocketdyne to the Redstone team in Huntsville Alabama can be read on page 245 of the book A Fiery Peace in a Cold War, by Neil Sheehan. Hall saw that for the time being liquid fueled rockets weren’t going to be the answer for the long range weapons carrying ballistic missiles he was trying for. The existing alloys weren’t going to be up to the task, consequently he signed them over to von Braun without regret.
He wasn’t planning on shooting for the moon, he wanted long range weapons carriers and is the father of the Minute Man series of solid fuel boosters. And if I’m not mistaken it was his (Hall’s) solid fuel designs which were incorporated into the Polaris, and later submarine launched missiles.

That said, may the man rest in peace. He had a good long run did he not?

 

thats too bad to hear, R.I.P.