Hermann Oberth Hermann Julius Oberth ( 25 June 1894 – 28 December 1989 ) was an Austro - Hungarian - born German physicist and engineer . He is considered one of the founding fathers of rocket ry and astronautics . Early life . Oberth was born to a Transylvanian Saxon family in Sibiu ( German : Hermannstadt , Hungarian : Nagyszeben ) , Austria - Hungary ( today Romania ) . By his own account and that of many others , around the age of 11 years old , Oberth became fascinated with the field in which he was to make his mark through reading the writings of Jules Verne , especially " From the Earth to the Moon " and " Around the Moon " , re - reading them to the point of memorization . Influenced by Verne ' s books and ideas , Oberth constructed his first model rocket as a school student at the age of 14 . In his youthful experiments , he arrived independently at the concept of the multistage rocket , but he lacked then the resources to pursue his idea on any but a pencil - and - paper level . In 1912 , Oberth began the study of medicine in Munich , Germany , but at the outbreak of World War I , he was drafted into the Imperial German Army , assigned to an infantry battalion , and sent to the Eastern Front against Russia . In 1915 , Oberth was moved into a medical unit at a hospital in Sighișoara ( German Schäßburg , Hungarian Segesvar ) , Transylvania , in Austria - Hungary ( today Romania ) . There he found the spare time to conduct a series of experiments concerning weightlessness , and later resumed his rocketry designs . By 1917 , he showed how far his studies had reached by firing a rocket with liquid propellant in a demonstration to Hermann von Stein , the Prussian Minister of War . On July 6 , 1918 , Oberth married Mathilde Hummel , with whom he had four children . Among these were a son who died as a soldier in World War II , and a daughter who also died during the war when there was an accidental explosion at a liquid oxygen plant where she was in August 1944 . In 1919 , Oberth once again moved to Germany , this time to study physics , initially in Munich and later in Göttingen . In 1922 , Oberth ' s proposed doctoral dissertation on rocket science was rejected as " utopian " . He next had his 92 - page work published privately in June 1923 as the somewhat controversial book , " Die Rakete zu den Planetenräumen " ( " By Rocket into Planetary Space " ) . By 1929 , Oberth had expanded this work to a 429 - page book titled " Wege zur Raumschiffahrt " ( " Ways to Spaceflight " ) . Oberth commented later that he made the deliberate choice not to write another doctoral dissertation . He wrote , " I refrained from writing another one , thinking to myself : Never mind , I will prove that I am able to become a greater scientist than some of you , even without the title of Doctor . " Oberth criticized the German system of education , saying " Our educational system is like an automobile which has strong rear lights , brightly illuminating the past . But looking forward , things are barely discernible . " Hermann Oberth was finally awarded his doctorate in physics with the same rocketry paper that he had written before , by the University , Cluj , Romania , under professor Augustin Maior , on May 23 , 1923 . Oberth became a member of the " Verein für Raumschiffahrt " ( VfR ) - the " Spaceflight Society " – an amateur rocketry group that had taken great inspiration from his book , and Oberth acted as something of a mentor to the enthusiasts who joined the Society . Oberth lacked the opportunities to work or to teach at the college or university level , as did many well - educated experts in the physical sciences and engineering in the time period of the 1920s through the 1930s – with the situation becoming much worse during the worldwide Great Depression that started in 1929 . Therefore , from 1924 through 1938 , Oberth supported himself and his family by teaching physics and mathematics at the Stephan Ludwig Roth High School in Mediaş , Romania . Rocketry and space flight . In parts of 1928 and 1929 , Oberth also worked in Berlin , Germany as a scientific consultant on the first film ever to have scenes set in outer space , " Frau im Mond " ( " The Woman in the Moon " ) , which was directed and produced by the great film pioneer Fritz Lang at the Universum Film AG company . This film was of enormous value in popularizing the ideas of rocket ry and space exploration . One of Oberth ' s main assignments was to build and launch a rocket as a publicity event just before the film ' s premiere . He also designed the model of the " " Friede " " , the main rocket portrayed in the film . On June 5 , 1929 , Oberth won the first ( Robert Esnault - Pelterie - André - Louis Hirsch ) " Rep - Hirsch Prize " of the French Astronomical Society for the encouragement of astronautics in his book " Wege zur Raumschiffahrt " ( " Ways to Spaceflight " ) that had expanded " Die Rakete zu den Planetenräumen " to a full - length book . In the autumn of 1929 , Oberth conducted a static firing of his first liquid - fueled rocket motor , which he named the " Kegeldüse " . The engine was built by Klaus Riedel in a workshop space provided by the Reich Institution of Chemical Technology , and although it lacked a cooling system , it did run briefly . He was helped in this experiment by an 18 year old student Wernher von Braun , who would later become a giant in both German and American rocket engineering from the 1940s onward , culminating with the gigantic Saturn V rockets that made it possible for men to land on the Moon in 1969 and in several following years . Indeed Von Braun said of him : In 1938 , the Oberth family left Sibiu , Romania , for good , to first settle in Austria , then in Nazi Germany , then in the United States , and finally back to a free Germany . Oberth himself moved on first to the Technische Hochschule in Vienna , Austria , then to the Technische Hochschule in Dresden , Germany . ( A Technische Hochschule at that time was a technical college offering advanced professional training in selected fields , rather than an institution also engaged in basic research , as a university . ) Oberth moved to Peenemünde , Germany , in 1941 to work on Nazi German rocketry projects , including the V - 2 rocket weapon , and in about September 1943 , he was awarded the " Kriegsverdienstkreuz I Klasse mit Schwertern " ( War Merit Cross 1st Class , with Swords ) for his " outstanding , courageous behavior . . . during the attack " on Peenemünde by Operation Hydra , part of Operation Crossbow . Oberth later worked on solid - propellant anti - aircraft rockets at the German WASAG military organization near Wittenberg . Around the end of World War II in Europe in May 1945 , the Oberth family moved to the town of Feucht , near Nuremberg , Germany , which became part of the American Zone of occupied Germany , and also the location of the high - level war - crimes trials of the surviving Nazi leaders . Oberth was allowed to leave Nuremberg to move to Switzerland in 1948 , where he worked as an independent rocketry consultant and a writer . In 1950 , Oberth moved on to Italy , where he completed some of the work that he had begun at the WASAG organization for the new Italian Navy . In 1953 , Oberth returned to Feucht , Germany , to publish his book " Menschen im Weltraum " ( " Men in Space " ) , in which he described his ideas for space - based reflecting telescope s , space stations , electric - powered spaceships , and space suit s . During the 1950s and 1960s , Oberth offered his opinions regarding unidentified flying object s ( UFOs ) . He was a supporter of the extraterrestrial hypothesis for the origin of the UFOs that were seen at the Earth . For example , in an article in " The American Weekly " magazine of October 24 , 1954 , Oberth stated , " It is my thesis that flying saucers are real , and that they are space ships from another solar system . I think that they possibly are manned by intelligent observers who are members of a race that may have been investigating our earth for centuries . . . " He also wrote an article in the second edition of " Flying Saucer Review " titled " They Come From Outer Space " . He discussed the history of reports of " strange luminous objects " in the sky , mentioning that the earliest historical case is of " Shining Shields " reported by Pliny the Elder . He wrote , " Having weighed all the pros and cons , I find the explanation of flying discs from outer space the most likely one . I call this the " Uraniden " hypothesis , because from our viewpoint the hypothetical beings appear to come from the sky ( Greek - ' Uranos ' ) . " Oberth eventually came to work for his former student , Wernher von Braun , who was developing space rockets for NASA in Huntsville , Alabama . ( " See also List of German rocket scientists in the United States " ) . Among other things , Oberth was involved in writing the study , " The Development of Space Technology in the Next Ten Years " . In 1958 , Oberth was back in Feucht , Germany , where he published his ideas on a lunar exploration vehicle , a " lunar catapult " , and on " muffled " helicopters and airplanes . In 1960 , back in the United States again , Oberth went to work for the Convair Corporation as a technical consultant on the Atlas rocket program . Later life . Oberth retired in 1962 at the age of 68 . From 1965 to 1967 he was a member of the National Democratic Party , which was considered to be far right . In July 1969 , Oberth returned to the United States to witness the launch of the Apollo project Saturn V rocket from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida that carried the Apollo 11 crew on the first landing mission to the Moon . The 1973 petroleum crisis inspired Oberth to look into alternative energy sources , including a plan for a wind power station that could utilize the jet stream . However , his primary interest during his retirement years was to turn to more abstract philosophical questions . Most notable among his several books from this period is " Primer For Those Who Would Govern " . Oberth returned to the United States to view the launch of 61A , the space shuttle Challenger launched October 30 , 1985 . Oberth died in Nuremberg , West Germany , on 28 December 1989 , just shortly after the fall of the Iron Curtain that had for so long divided Germany into two countries . Legacy . Hermann Oberth is memorialized by the Hermann Oberth Space Travel Museum in Feucht , Germany , and by the Hermann Oberth Society . The museum brings together scientists , researchers , engineers , and astronauts from the East and the West to carry on his work in rocketry and space exploration . The Oberth effect , in which a rocket engine when traveling at high speed generates more useful energy than one traveling at low speed , is named after him . There is also a crater on the Moon and asteroid 9253 Oberth named after him . The science - fiction movie " " mentions the " Oberth " - class of starship s hypothetically to be in his honor . Later on , this same class of starships is mentioned in several episodes of the American TV series " " . " " features Hermann Oberth as the " teacher " of the movie ' s protagonist , Edward Elric . Oberth is also mentioned in the last episode of the TV series " Fullmetal Alchemist " . In this episode , Elric has heard of a great scientist , named " Oberth " , with curious theories ( The English dub explicitly states his name and research into rocketry ) . The last moments of the series depict Elric on board a train on his way to meet Oberth , determined to study rocketry with him . The mecha anime series " The Super Dimension Fortress Macross " from the early eighties featured a type of military spacecraft used by the U . N . Spacy Earth forces called the " Oberth Class Space Destroyer " . A character from the series , Captain Bruno J . Global , was supposedly the first to engage another space combat vessel with this type of ship using nuclear weapon s .