One of the Last Von Braun Rocket Team Members Dies

Now he knows everything.

Here is a great tribute article from the Huntsville Times.

http://blog.al.com/breaking/2008/05/stuhlinger_von_brauns_chief_sc.html

Here is the official Obituary for Dr. Stuhlinger.

Dr. Ernst Stuhlinger
(December 19, 1913 - May 25, 2008)

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Dr. Ernst Stuhlinger, 94, of Huntsville died Sunday. Ernst Stuhlinger was born in 1913 in Niederrimbach, a small farmer's village in southern Germany where his father was the school teacher. He attended high school and university in Tuebingen. Studying physics under Professor Hans Geiger, he graduated in 1936 with a dissertation in cosmic ray physics, and then continued working on cosmic rays and nuclear physics at the Technical University of Berlin. In 1939, he joined the German atomic energy program under Professor Heisenberg. Two years later, he was drafted into the German Army; after spending 18 months as a Pfc. at the Russian front, he was transferred to Wernher von Braun's rocket development center at Peenemuende where he worked on the development of guidance and control systems.
At the end of World War II, von Braun and 126 of his co-workers, including Stuhlinger, were invited by the U. S. Army to continue their rocket development work in the United States, first at Fort Bliss, Texas, and from 1950 on in Huntsville. Under the auspices of the Army, the team grew quickly, developing the Redstone, the Jupiter, and the Pershing missiles. On 31 January, 1958, the von Braun group, together with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, launched Explorer I with a modified Redstone rocket. In 1961, another modified Redstone launched the first American astronaut, Alan B. Shepard, into space on a ballistic trajectory.

In 1960, von Braun's team was transferred to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) as the George C. Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville. Stuhlinger's main areas of work included the planning of satellite projects, instrumentation for scientific space investigations, studies of electric space propulsion systems, and the organization of in-house research projects. In 1968, Stuhlinger was appointed associate director for science at the G. C. Marshall Space Flight Center. After retiring from NASA in 1976, he joined the University of Alabama in Huntsville, teaching astrophysics and space sciences, and working on a project to develop and test electric automobiles. During those years, he spent several months at the universities of Munich and Heidelberg under the Alexander von Humboldt research award program where he worked out project plans for space probes to asteroids and comets with electric propulsion systems. Later, he joined Teledyne Brown Engineering in Huntsville as a senior research associate and participated in project studies related to materials processing in space, instrumentation for space-borne experiments, rocket-propelled space planes, and manned missions to Mars.

Stuhlinger was awarded honorary degrees from the University of Alabama in Huntsville and the Technical University of Berlin. He was the recipient of numerous other awards and honors.

Survivors include his wife, Irmgard Stuhlinger; sons, Tilman Werner Stuhlinger of Tucson, Arizona, and H. Christoph Stuhlinger of Monticello, Arkansas; daughter, Susanne Schmidt and husband Siegfried of Heidenheim, Germany; grandsons, Andreas W. Schmidt of Aachen, Germany and Alexander E. Schmidt of Hannover, Germany; sister, Elisabeth Schmidt of Ludwigsburg, Germany; numerous nieces and nephews and a host of friends and associates.

Visitation will be from 6 to 8 p.m. Thursday at Laughlin Service Funeral Home. A memorial service will be at 11 a.m. Saturday at St. Mark's Lutheran Church with the Rev. Dennis Fakes officiating. The burial will be private.

In lieu of flowers, memorials may be made to the von Braun Scholarship Fund at UAH, the U.S. Space and Rocket Center, Wiregrass Hospice, or a favorite charity.