I knew about von Braun and General Medaris agitating for a Jupiter C
launch of a satellite in 1956. Someone was trying to tell me, last
week, that von Braun apparently conspired to put a satellite in orbit
in 1956! The Jupiter C was being used to do ballistic missile re-entry
tests from Florida; von Braun was going to... kind of sort of ....'by
accident'.. go for a ballistic arc that circled the Earth or even
Earth orbit. Apparently ...General. Medaris was willing to look the
other way, till the Pentagon got wind of it. The DOD told Medaris to
tell von Braun it was verboten! So it never came about. That a space
age myth?