Pat Flannery wrote:

If this was posted before, forgive me, but I just spotted it. Mark Wade
has put up a new section devoted to Wernher von Braun's rocket designs
of the 1950's, such as appeared in the Colliers articles and Disney
programs; and will appear any-year-now in David Sander's "Man Conquers
Space" movie: http://www.astronautix.com/lvfam/vonbraun.htm

Two of the designs there are the A-11 and A-12. I've been tryign to hunt
them down for some years myself, and have coem to this conclusion:
They're bull****.

Actually, I believe that von Braun may have thought about such space
launchers during the war years, but probably never put anythign on
paper. But after the war, while being interrorgated by the US Army,
suddenly he had these concepts for very impressive vehicles... job
insurance. I've been in tought with a few of the remaining Peenemunde
rocketeers over the years, and they have all claimed that the A-11 was
not soemthign that was worked on in Germany.

Specific notes: The 1946 White Sands artwork for a V-2 derived 3-stage
satellite launcher sure looks like Peenemunde design, at least at first.
The third stage is clearly a V-2, the second clearly an A-10, and the
first sure seems to be a related design. Hopwever... note that *all*
*three* stages have their full-sized fins. That's nutty.

And on the A-12: in post war publications, von Braun described the A-12
as being three stage, not four, with the third stage being a winged A-10
carrying Shuttle-class payload.


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Scott Lowther, Engineer
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