Von Braun was one of the most influential and controversial aerospace engineers in 20th century history, destined to become famous as the father of space travel, but also for the moral ambiguities that characterised him. From an early age, he was fascinated by space in both a scientific and an imaginative dimension; indeed, his passion for Jules Verne's novels, in particular From the Earth to the Moon, had a major impact on his boyhood fantasies and led him to try his hand at studying space.

His career reached a turning point in the 1930s, when the German Nazi regime chose him to lead the fearsome and controversial V-2 missile programme, the first long-range ballistic missile that the Germans used to sow terror, bombing London and Antwerp. The V-2 represented an incredible evolutionary leap in modern missile history, forming a fundamental technological basis for future space programmes. Von Braun's participation in Nazi projects, however, marked an indelible stain on his future career.

At the end of the war, with the defeat of Germany, Von Braun and most of his team moved to the United States, preferring to cooperate with the Allies rather than be captured by the Soviets. The relocation of the team to the American facilities took the name 'Operation Paperclip' and was successful. Von Braun began developing the Redstone and Jupiter C rockets for the US space programme.

His career continued into the 1960s, when he became director of a NASA science centre and helped design the Saturn V rocket, the same rocket that enabled the Apollo 11 mission to reach the Moon in 1969, the historic date when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first men to set foot on our natural satellite.

Towards the end of his life, Von Braun had by then proved to be a very capable scientist, yet his Nazi past still raises questions today.