Von Braun did not randomly become the director of the MSFC, receive a mandate to build the Saturn rockets, became chief architect of the Saturn V and the alternate director of NASA.
Mostly right.
Von Braun was the most prominent spokesmen and the major contributor of popularizing space exploration in the United States and one of the most important rocket developers and champions of space exploration from the 1930's until the 1970's. That's what NASA headquarters and MSFC sources clearly state up until today.
Yes. But hindsight has always 20/20. Von Braun did not get the task to design the Saturn Rockets (and he sure did not build them) because he was such a nice guy and children loved him on TV. He also did not get the task because would one day be considered the best rocket designer of the USA. The people did not know it yet. Operation Paperclip was the reason why Von Braun did not end in a soviet POW camp, but it did not give him any bonus especially not towards getting the Saturn contract. He was a highly regarded specialist on the large ballistic missiles like the V-2, because they had been unique. The Russians needed only a short time to reverse engineer them without having the original designers at hand.
And the very versatile Atlas rocket was not designed by Von Braun or his team at all - he was property of the US Army, the Atlas rocket and other ICBMs had been designed by an Airforce team led by the Belgian Karel Bossart. There had been alternatives around.
Von Braun got the Saturn contract out of cold rational and political reasons:
- His price for merging the ABMA with NASA was the Saturn heavy lift program. So, Saturn has to be build, if the ABMA should become part of NASA.
- He had the largest test stands for rocket engines in the USA in his institute.
- He had an early start on developing heavy lift boosters by a US Army contract issued shortly before the ABMA became part of NASA.
- Luck also helped him on the engine selection - the choice of using new engines instead of the already developed E-1 engines meant only a team with large test stands can be considered. No chance for new teams, only two developers left.
- The Atlas team was already awarded the contract to develop the Centaur stage with the same lightweight structures as the Atlas, making them no alternative for a short term selection.
There was never a single "Von Braun is the best rocket designer we have" in the equation. In terms of rocket design, Karel Bossart was even way better, because Von Braun prefered solution was always brute force, while Bossart invested into making the rocket lighter and smarter.
What made Von Braun the biggest rocket designer guy in history is actually something else, which also played a part in why he got the contract: He had great skills as manager and politician. He did never excel much as engineer of his own, but the way he led his team and his programs had been extraordinary: He was a moral-free opportunist. You have to say it that way. His work consisted not of solving technical problems, but solving political ones, especially by finding and exploiting opportunities. Like bluffing with not joining NASA without the Saturn program.
In my less rational and more emotional opinion on Von Braun, I would summarize his achievements as such: He made whole countries pay and build his moon landing dreams. How they did so was not his department.
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And that brings us right back on the real reason for the discussion: Von Braun never had the status to do anything without criticism. Never. And so did the whole spaceflight program. No glory, no religious devotion to the moon landing, the USA had not even been free of doubt if they could get to the moon before the Soviets. Or to the moon at all. All they did know was: Everything else, would be done by the Soviets earlier. And they had been historically right with this assessment.
But a moon landing was science-fiction then - imaginable, mathematically possible, but at the end of a long chain of unsolved technical and medical problems. And for that the USA should pay up to 5% of their federal budget? It was not only about "was it possible", but "Is it worth it". And every time, this question appears, there will be meetings, investigations, conferences and committees.
Finally, it was decided that the space race is far too important politically to leave the victory to the Soviets. And that not spontanously by Kennedy after talking with Von Braun. It took already one month from the famous briefing of Johnson by Dryden, one year after Kennedy decided to take the challenge of the space race, to the moment Kennedy embraced the moon landing as only chance. When Kennedy visited the MSFC (September 11, 1962)and met with Von Braun the first time, the important stuff was already decided and prepared. one half week after the MSFC visit, he held his famous "Not because it is easy, but because it is hard" speech at Rice University.
