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new blueprints, they captured German engineers, deported
them, and forced them to reproduce all the blueprints for
the V2. It took two years.^36
Compared with his competitors across the globe, von
Braun lived a better life in US, but would always be
remembered of his German origin. He claimed that he
wasn’t a Nazi and he had only joined the Nazi Party to be
able to work on his rockets since civilian rocket tests were
outlawed. “We felt no moral scruples about the possible
use of our brainchild,” von Braun said. “We were interested
solely in exploring outer space.” But it has been estimated
that 7 000 people died in V2 attacks, and 12 000 slave
laborers died while building the rockets.^131
During one press conference, a journalist asked jok-
ingly if von Braun’s new American rocket would land
in London – a reference to the V2 rockets landing in
London during the war. It made von Braun leave the room.
Another common way to taunt von Braun was to talk
about NASAism, a word similar to Nazism, and the satirist
Tom Lehrer sang, “Once the rockets are up, who cares
where they come down? ‘That’s not my department,’ says
Wernher von Braun.”^15
The US rocket engineers lost against the Soviet Union
in the race who could launch the first satellite. Von Braun
was ready to launch a satellite on the top of his modified
Jupiter-C rocket called Juno-1. But he wasn’t allowed to,
mainly because of political reasons as he was from Ger-
many. To prevent von Braun from launching a satellite
by “accident,” Pentagon sent inspectors to monitor the