Werner Von Braun was a German rocket scientist sought by Adolf Hitler to develop rocket technology for the Nazi party.
Instead of living under a madman, Von Braun and other German rocket scientists turned themselves over to the United States to develop rocket technology.
USSR’s top rocket technician was Sergei Korolev, who Joseph Stalin wanted for his expertise to transport nuclear bombs long distances.
Korolev succeeded first with the launching of the first satellite into space called Sputnik or “fellow traveler.” Sputnik went up on Oct. 4, 1957, and stayed up for 21 days dazzling all the earthlings.
January 1958, the United States sent up its first satellite named the “Explorer 1” which orbited for three months and discovered the Van Allen Belt.
The launching of these Satellites started space fever in the United States and the whole world. President John F. Kennedy was fascinated by the space fever and pushed the space program into full throttle by putting shorter time estimates on projects that were actually expected to take much longer to complete.
Yuri Gagarin of the former Soviet Union was the first man into space. He lifted off on April 1961, and completed one orbit around the earth. Amazingly, he had to eject from the capsule before he hit the ground.
On Freedom 7, Alan Shepard (Navy) went into sub-orbital space and was up for 15 minutes. He experienced 11 G forces of pressure coming back into the Earth’s atmosphere.
In the late 1950s, the Mercury 7 project was started in the United States and seven men were selected. Scott Carpenter, Gordo Cooper, John Glenn, Gus Grissom, Wally Schira, Alan Shepard and Deke Slayton; three Navy men, three Air Force men and one Marine.
America was taken with the seven new celebrities but all seven were fighting to show scientists and physicians that they were more capable of flying into space than chimpanzees. Time magazine had a deal to cover every step of the astronauts from training to flights.
Today, Americans are still amazed at space exploration but the interest isn’t as strong as it was in the last days of the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo missions. Technology is so great that a shuttle going into space does not even usually make the top stories of a newspaper anymore.
Astronauts and space explorations do make news when tragedy strikes.
On Jan. 27, 1967, on an Apollo “plugs-out-test” Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee suffocated when a wire sparked and sucked all the oxygen out of the capsule.
Chaffee was a hero of the Cuban Missile Crisis and of course Gus Grissom flew the second flight in the Mercury missions.
The Challenger took off into a blue sky on Jan. 28, 1986. As the Challenger flew up into the clear blue Florida sky, it exploded killing all seven on board, including teacher Christa McCauliffe.
It took only 73 seconds after the launch for the explosion to take place. The reasons for the explosion were the below freezing weather and the failure of the O-rings.
The astronauts that died in the explosion were Michael Smith, Francis Scobee, Judy Resnick, Ronald McNair, Greg Jarvis and Elvin Onizuka.
Saturday, we lost the lives of more admirable men and women. They were Rick Husband, whose life-long ambition it was to become an astronaut.
William McCool, second in his 1983 class at the Naval Academy and thrilled to be going into space.
Michael Anderson, who said, “I take the risk because I think what we’re doing is really important.”
Kalpana Chawla, who emigrated to the U.S. in the 1980s from India and was a heroine to the people of her land.
David Brown, who was a Navy captain and this was his first flight.
Laurel Clark, who said, “There’s a lot of different things that could potentially harm us and I chose not to stop doing those things.”
Ilan Ramon, the first Israeli astronaut, fought in the Yom Kippur War and Lebanon War. He died in a clear Texas sky.
They will continue to live. If not in our memories, through God’s record of time.
Each one leaving a different legacy all answering a resounding call to the treacherous trip man makes toward truth revealed in the firmament above us.

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