valigursky made pretty pictures, but ernst stuhlinger was the man...,

wikipedia |  Stuhlinger was born in Niederrimbach (now part of Creglingen), Württemberg, Germany. At age 23, he earned his doctorate in physics at the University of Tübingen in 1936, working with Otto Haxel, Hans Bethe and his advisor Hans Geiger.^[4][5][6] In 1939 to 1941, he worked in Berlin, on cosmic rays and nuclear physics as an assistant professor at the Berlin Institute of Technology developing innovative nuclear detector instrumentation.^[7]

Despite showing promise as a scientist, in 1941 Stuhlinger was drafted as a private in the German Army and sent to the Russian front, where he was wounded during the Battle of Moscow. Following this, he was in the Battle of Stalingrad and was one of the few members of his unit to survive and make the long, on-foot retreat out of Russia in the cold of winter.^[8] Upon reaching German territory in 1943, Stuhingler was ordered to the rocket development center in Peenemunde where he joined Dr. Wernher von Braun's team. For the remainder of the war, he worked in the field of guidance systems.^[9] In 1954, Stuhlinger assisted in the founding of the Rocket City Astronomical Association (Renamed to the Von Braun Astronomical Society following von Braun's death) where he served as one of the five original directors for the observatory built inside Monte Sano State Park.^[10]

 

Research Scientist Stuhlinger was one of the first group of 126 scientists who emigrated to the United States with von Braun after World War II as part of Operation Paperclip. In the 1945–50 years, he primarily worked on guidance systems in US Army missile programs at Fort Bliss, Texas. In 1950, von Braun's team and the missile programs were transferred to Redstone Arsenal at Huntsville, Alabama. For the next decade, Stuhlinger and other von Braun team members worked on Army missiles, but they also devoted efforts in building an unofficial space capability. He eventually served as director of the Advanced Research Projects Division of the Army Ballistic Missile Agency (ABMA).^[7] On April 14, 1955, together with many other Paperclip members, he became a naturalized United States citizen.^[1]