Talk:Wernher von Braun

message: I am moving the following uncited material here until it can be properly supported with inline citations of reliable, secondary sources, per WP:V, WP:CS, WP:IRS, WP:PSTS, WP:BLP, WP:NOR, et al. This diff shows where it was in the article. Nightscream (talk) 19:42, 3 January 2022 (UTC)
thread_title: Uncited material in need of citations

message: Perhaps my memory might be failing me, but I do remember that there used to be this photo on this wikipedia page some time back. Is there a reason why it was removed. *ahem*. I also remember this photo being on the Argentinian wikipedia, but that was removed as well I think. Could we restore this back on this and the argentinian wikipedia? Especially considering the role James Fletcher played in the Space Shuttle program. Theheezy (talk) 15:03, 26 June 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: It does appear my memory was failing me. I found this photo through other means by googling many years back. We should certainly figure out a place on english wikipedia to add this photo especially considering the people involved and the relative human casualty rate of the apollo program vs. the space shuttle program. Theheezy (talk) 19:42, 26 June 2023 (UTC)
replies: text:  I've added this photo to the page at Space Shuttle Program. Theheezy (talk) 19:59, 26 June 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Missing iconic photo with James Fletcher Apollo 15 Firing Room 1? 

message: "and in 1975, he received the National Medal of Science" is later refuted in the death section where it says it was 1977. 68.207.184.244 (talk) 16:19, 29 August 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dates 

message: In the early life section, there's a few sentences that talk about a young Wernher von Braun nearly being killed in a homemade rocket car accident. However, the citation leads to an article from the Smithsonian Magazine which has no citations for any of the claims it makes. The article also has a number of factual errors, particularly towards the start of the article when it tries to make the tenuous connection between Elon Musk and Fritz von Opel. During this attempted comparison, it says that both men "start[ed their] own privately funded automobile [...] business[es]." While this may or may not be true for von Opel, it is verifiably false for Musk, as he bought Tesla from its founders Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning. It also states that Fritz von Opel inherited his fortune while Elon Musk made his own fortune himself. This is not remotely the case, as Musk admitted himself in a 2014 interview that his father had "a private plane" and "a share in an emerald mine in Zambia." It also gets the date of the publishing of Max Valier's Der Vorstoss in den Weltraum wrong, claiming that it came out in 1925. However, as according to a paper (4th page of pdf, second paragraph) by a curator at the Smithsonian who actually bothered to cite his sources,  it was originally published in 1924. It received a reprint in 1925, which may be where some of the confusion comes from, but even the smallest amount of due diligence in fact checking would have given the correct date.
Additionally, beyond the shoddy work of the Smithsonian article, the sentences in this Wikipedia page which cite it seem to paradoxically contain more content than what was written in the citation. Von Braun is mentioned in a single sentence in the article, that being: "Even 16-year old Wernher von Braun was bitten by the bug, constructing his own homemade rocket car and nearly killing himself in the process." However, in this Wikipedia page, von Braun is said to have caused a disruption in a crowded street, created the rocket car with fireworks and a toy wagon, and been taken into custody by the police until his father retrieved him. The assumption that the rocket car "detonated" is also flawed, because the article doesn't even say that he nearly killed himself after trying to fire the rockets. It says that he nearly killed himself in the "process" of "constructing his own homemade rocket car," which could mean a number of things. Maybe he accidentally inhaled some fumes he shouldn't have, or almost dropped something heavy on himself. The vagueness of the cited article combined with the strange specificity of the sentences in von Braun's Wikipedia page give me some pause.
Most damning of all is the fact that the previously mentioned paper does not mention this event happening at all. One would assume a paper on the "rocket rumble" would make a mention of such a standout example to help highlight the effects of the fad. However, even at the most opportune time the paper could talk about this happening (page 8, "[...] a number of future engineers at Peenemünde, notably Wernher von Braun, had their interest in rocketry sparked or increased by the publicity [of the Opel RAK tests]."), it doesn't make even a passing reference to the event.
With that said, I believe the sentences on the rocket car accident should either be edited, removed, or a better source for them–if any exist–should be used instead of the current one. Fungustober (talk) 20:10, 17 December 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: I also replaced the voluminous Fritz von Opel, Max Valier and Opel-RAK details with links to the relevant articles. Ilenart626 (talk) 16:01, 6 January 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dubious Source 

message: I notice under the citizenship area it only lists USA citizenship, is there no place to find the citizenship for before USA naturalization? NoneStar (talk) 22:26, 10 March 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm not sure what you want. The line above says "Nationality German" (whatever that means), there are long sections of the article, Early life and Career in Germany, which discuss his time in Germany. He was clearly in Germany just prior to arriving in the US. The line "On 15 April 1955, von Braun became a naturalized citizen of the United States" is sourced. I don't think there is any reason to imagine he had any other citizenship. Johnjbarton (talk) 01:53, 11 March 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Citizenship 

message: The article says that von Braun was made a professor by Hitler. The dictator did not have any higher education beyond primary school, did not even speak a foreign language, and promoted a leading scientist to professor.
I once saw a US documentary on the space program and the moon flight. Wernher von Braun´s name was not mentioned at all. Ontologix (talk) 04:16, 24 May 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Absurdities Surrounding von Braun