The name of von Braun is not as well known as we space enthusiasts like to think but, when it is recognised, it raises fiercely mixed emotions. To some – those living in Antwerp or London in 1944 and 1945 – he was the evil genius responsible for creating the V2 rocket, built with slave labour, that caused so much misery at the end of the Second World War. To others, he was the engineering guru who led humanity to conquer space. This biography of von Braun was written by two engineers who fall into the second camp. Both Fred Ordway, who met von Braun during his Huntsville days, and Ernst Stuhlinger, who worked with him from Peenemunde onwards, were friends and colleagues of von Braun. Ordway particularly has a strong track record in the history of rocketry.

This comprehensive volume, together with its sister publication, which contains a pictorial record of von Braun’s life, is elegantly written and exhaustively researched. It records the story of von Braun’s life and achievements in the field of rocketry starting from his early work in the late 1920s as a member of the VfR, the German Rocket Society. Von Braun became an employee of the German Army in 1932 and spent the next 13 years, first at Kummersdorf near Berlin, and later at Peenemunde, the secret rocket research station on the Baltic coast, working on the development of liquid fuel rockets. This programme culminated in the V2 rocket. After the war, von Braun and a large team of Peenemunde engineers moved to the US, where they continued their work on large military rockets, this time for the American army.

The accomplishments of this US-based team, now expanded to include local engineers, are legendary – they developed the US’s first long range missile (Redstone), provided the launch vehicle that orbited America’s first satellite and later, under the auspices of the civil space agency, NASA, developed the Saturn family of rockets. This included the Saturn V rocket that sent the Apollo astronauts to the Moon. So influential were von Braun and his team in almost every major rocket activity in Germany and the US between 1930 and 1970, that this volume effectively represents a history of rocketry in the Western world.

There is no doubt that von Braun was a brilliant engineer (he himself would have objected to being called a scientist) and an effective manager. He also had, by all accounts, a charismatic manner and tended to be extremely well liked, even idolised, by those who came into contact with him. His influence on the rise in public interest in all aspects of space travel in the US in the 1950s cannot be overemphasised.

There is, however, another side to the story not fully explored by the authors. Von Braun has always maintained that, even when working on the V2 at Peenemunde during the depths of the Second World War, his thoughts were always on spaceflight and that he had no interest in developing a working missile. This I cannot fully accept and, from conversations with one of the authors, Ordway, at a recent space conference in Jerusalem, I suspect he shares this view. Von Braun was a space enthusiast but he was also an exceptionally single-minded engineer. I am certain that he would have devoted all his talents to any difficult engineering task he faced, be it military or civil. I also believe that military matters were not so distasteful to him as he might lead us to believe; he did, after all, work for the military authorities in both Germany and the US for 28 years before moving to the civil side with NASA.

It has often been said that von Braun was an opportunist who used the support and facilities that only the military could provide to develop the technologies needed for spaceflight. There is much truth in this view. There is also the question of his association, and of some of the colleagues who joined him in the US, with the ruling powers in Germany during the Third Reich. This association has, to my view, never been adequately researched. Any sane person would accept that, in a situation such as that in Nazi Germany, any person who wanted to work or even to exist, would have to toe the line to some extent. But how far? Several other books have touched on von Braun’s links with the German Nazi regime and these tend to paint him in a different light than found in this volume.

Whatever the rights and wrongs of this argument, and more considered research is needed before the jury can bring in a verdict, this volume is essential reading for all space enthusiasts and historians. It is the first real biography of von Braun, certainly a colossus among rocket engineers. Without him, his engineering and management skills combined with his undying enthusiasm for popularising space travel, it is unlikely that space exploration would have developed as fast as it has in the past half century. I wish we had a personality of the status of von Braun arguing the case for space exploration today.

Robots by Geoff Simons, Cassell, pp 240, £14.99

During the first 21 years of my life I often chased reluctant sheep
at shearing time on a remote farm in Devon, and I have recently spent 18
months working on an exhibition of Japanese industrial robots for the Science
Museum in London. Even so, I found it difficult to take Robots for Shearing
Sheep seriously because of the unintentional humour of the illustrations.
The name ‘shear magic’ given to the Mark II shearing robot described in
the book and the casual style of the text, liberally embroidered with anecdotes,
could lead inexperienced readers to wonder if their legs were being pulled.
We are told, for example, that, after many failed attempts to make a sheep
bleat while trussed to the shearing table, one of the research team lay
on the table impersonating the animals. It transpires that this had a serious
intent: to determine if the vibrations caused by a sheep protesting during
robotic shearing would confuse the robot’s sensor elements.

Once the initial amusement fades, we find a book with important stories
to tell. It is as much a case study of the rise and fall of a technically
ambitious Australian research project as it is about robot technology. You
will learn as much about sheep, the wool industry and Australian research
funding policies as about robots: the world shearing record using hand blades,
set by Jack Howe at the Alice Down Station in 1891, is 321 sheep in 7 hours
40 minutes.

James Trevelyan recounts the attempts, by research workers at the University
of Western Australia to develop a robot that could shear a sheep in less
than 2.5 minutes. This is no easy task, but that it was attempted and that
the project was apparently on the verge of success when cancelled shows
how far robot technology has advanced. A sheep, although dubbed stupid
by many, is not an immobile object. It breathes and each one has a different
shape, so much of the research effort went into finding a sensing device
that would keep the shearing head at the correct distance from the sheep’s
skin. Too far from the skin and not enough wool would be sheared for the
farmer’s profit margin, too close to the skin and the sheep would complain.

Robots by Geoff Simons, the author of many books on robotics and intelligent
machines, is far more traditional, although equally forward looking, in
its approach. It sketches in nontechnical language the history of the robot
in humanoid form, beginning with legends and the development of clockwork
mechanical toys (automata), before the advent of electronics. The emphasis
is on robots that, as Simons says: ‘have humanoid characteristics in terms
of both their physical architecture and their mental capabilities’.

Simons is a strong advocate of not only the potential but the inevitability
of the humanoid robot. Drawing on numerous examples of research in progress
on such diverse topics as artificial muscles and ears, he paints a picture
of the future where ‘there will be few tasks outside the scope of tomorrow’s
universal robots’. In the area of healthcare alone, we read of robots being
developed in the US to perform hip replacement operations and at Imperial
College, London, to carry out prostatectomies and even brain operations.

Some aspects of this vision of the future fill me with apprehension
– and that includes the idea of robot lovers as well as the thought of
being operated on by machines. But despite this, Simon’s book provides
a cracking good read and a succinct outline of artificial intelligence
and its application to robotics. It also illustrates that, although Japan
dominates the production and use of robots, research and development in
advance of robot technology is worldwide.

John Becklake is director of technology at the Science Museum, London.

You might consider yourself justified in asking whether anything new
could be added to the many earlier biographies of the famous Wright brothers,
who made history in December 1903 with the world’s first heavier-than-air,
manned and powered flight. Tom Crouch, however, employs these earlier works,
as well as previously overlooked family letters and diaries, to describe
the achievements in aviation and later business failures of Wilbur and Orville
Wright against the context of their family and background. The result is
a most readable, authoritative and balanced narrative that is as much about
the Wright family and friends as about their historic flight.

The bishop in the title is their father, Bishop Milton Wright, a man
of great strength of character, determination and absolute confidence. These
characteristics, many of which his sons inherited, probably contributed
to the controversies that followed the family. Milton was also a strong
believer in the family. He mistrusted the outside world, and instilled a
suspiciousness in the brothers that reappears throughout their careers,
contributing to their problems in the world of business. Another source
of influence and support, highlighted in this book, was their younger sister
Katherine who took over the running of the home when their mother Susan
died.

The Wright brothers became interested in flying after reading of the
death of Otto Lilienthal, the German expert on gliders in 1896. They contacted
the Smithsonian Institution for information in 1899. By the autumn of 1900,
the Wrights were making their first glider flights from Kitty Hawk. Only
three years later, in 1903, they made the world’s first manned powered flight.
All this development work had been funded from the brothers’ bicycle business.

Crouch analyses the exceptional engineering qualities that enabled the
Wright brothers to succeed where others had failed. He describes how they
isolated the problems, their attention to detail and their realisation that
the craft must be fully control-lable in flight by the pilot, a facility
omitted by other would-be aviation designers. He also discusses the importance
of the experience gained in their bicycle business. This influence can be
overemphasised, but one can only wonder at a New York editor who remarked
in 1896 that the invention of a successful heavier than air flying machine
would probably be the work of bicycle makers.

By 1903 the Wright brothers had acquired a considerable reputation,
many friends and many more hangers-on. Notable among the friends was Octave
Chanute who constantly urged the Wright brothers to make more publicity
out of their achievements and to publish their results. Wilbur and Orville
thought otherwise. They were secretive and suspicious to suggestions, particularly
in Europe and France, that the Wright’s early flights were simply flights
of fantasy.

The Bishop’s Boys describes the Wrights’ efforts to make money from
their work. There is no doubt that they were several years ahead of the
field in aviation technology, but they were not good at business. They tried,
unsuccessfully at first, to sell their planes in the US, Britain, France
and Germany. But they refused to participate in flying fairs where their
competitors were earning money and learning the trade. The Wright brothers
would not even let prospective customers see the aircraft in flight until
after a contract had been signed. By 1908, however, they were making public
flights in France, and establishing records for world endurance and distance
almost at will. They had confirmed their position as the premier aviators
in the world.

But the rest of the world was catching up. Soon the Wright flyers were
no longer the best and the brothers became locked into long drawn out patent
cases against other flyers. Even after Wilbur had died in 1912 and after
Orville sold the Wright Company and retired to Dayton three years later,
the Wright controversy did not die. In the 1920s, Orville lent the original
Wright flyer to the Science Museum in London because he objected to the
claims the Smithsonian Institution was making about the earlier Langley
flying machine being capable of powered flight. The Wright flyer only returned
to the US in 1948 when the Smithsonian finally recognised the achievements
of the Bishop’s boys in a manner that Orville found acceptable.

Crouch, an eminent aerospace historian from the National Air and Space
Museum in Washington, approaches in a balanced and sympathetic way the character
of the brothers, their achievements and their patent controversies, their
eventual quarrel with their friend Chanute, and Orville’s sad feud with
his sister Katharine after she married in 1926. If I have a criticism it
is not with the content or style of the book but with the illustrations.
These are few, small and indistinct, in contrast to the excellent pictures
of the same events published in other books.

John Becklake is director of technology at the Science Musseum, London

IT MIGHT appear somewhat incongruous to build large rockets and then
ship them to a launch site halfway round the world. But this was the idea
behind the Woomera rocket range, established in South Australia just after
the Second World War.

In 1945, Britain knew better than most countries the potential of the
long-range rocket as a formidable weapon because of the V1 and V2 missiles
that the Germans had sent across the Channel. Conscious of the country’s
precarious status as a world power, the post-war Labour government of Clement
Attlee determined to develop the two weapons which it felt would maintain
this status. These were the long-range missile and the nuclear bomb.

To test these missiles, however, needed a large firing range. Following
a brief flirtation with the frozen tundra of Canada’s Hudson Bay area, Attlee’s
government reached an agreement with Australia to use the site at Woomera.
In this Joint Project, as the agreement was called, Britain and Australia
became equal partners in developing one of the largest rocket test ranges
in the world – at its greatest, it stretched 1600 kilometres across the
desert.

Fire Across the Desert is a detailed, well-researched book which provides
a readable, in-depth account of the Joint Project. Sponsored by the Australian
Department of Defence, it gives the lie to the generally accepted view that
official histories make dull reading.

The author, Peter Morton, writes from an Australian standpoint as he
concentrates on the political, social and economic history of the project
through all the peaks, troughs and changes of direction in its 33-year existence.
People figure prominently, and particularly interesting are the sections
that deal with how the authorities treated the native aborigines who inhabited
the firing range. Woomera is in fact an aboriginal word describing a utensil
which could be either a spear thrower or a shallow dish.

This first academic treatment of the Joint Project has been a long time
coming. Until now the trails at Woomera were shrouded by the excessive secrecy
which characterised much British R&D work since the war. Even though
the author was given access to all relevant archives it took 15 months for
the Ministry of Defence in Britain to give final security clearance for
the chapter on the Black Knight rocket.

If I have a quibble it is that readers seeking technical details of
the rockets and missiles fired from Woomera will be disappointed, although
there are chapters devoted to the major projects. Likewise, there is only
a passing mention of related topics such as the controversial British nuclear
tests on the fringes of the range.

Once the British and Australians agreed the Joint Project, they faced
the practical problems involved in establishing a launch site in the desert
430 kilometres north of Adelaide. Morton comprehensively deals with these
difficulties, not the least being building the town of Woomera from virgin
desert in less than three years, including early labour problems, the bringing
of water and building airstrips. Woomera eventually became a thriving community
– nearly 6000 inhabitants during its heyday in the early 1960s. British
influences can clearly be seen; among its facilities, Woomera boasted a
croquet lawn.

The original purpose of the Joint Project, to test long-range missiles,
was never fulfilled. Plans for an air-breathing cruise missile, codenamed
Menace, and a ballistic V2 type missile, codenamed Hammer, were cancelled
in 1947, giving rise to rumours that the Joint Project itself might founder.
During its first decade, Woomera was used only to test short- and medium-range
missiles and as a bombing range.

Morton sensitively describes the changes in fortune of the Joint Project:
from the days of expectancy after 1954, when Britain announced that it intended
to build its own medium-range ballistic missile, Blue Streak, to the death
knell in 1971 with the cancellation of Black Arrow, a satellite launcher.
Morton reveals, for the first time, many of the political intricacies of
this period.

Woomera went through a time of gloom after the cancellation of Blue
Streak, but later found itself in the mainstream of large rocket work for
a brief period. In the mid 1960s, it was the launch site for the European
Europa rocket, before this ill-fated project moved its launch site nearer
the Equator.

Before the demise of the Joint Project in 1980 much important rocket
work was carried out at Woomera. Launches included 22 Black Knight rockets,
more than 200 Skylark scientific rockets and 10 flights of the Europa launcher.
In November 1967, Australia launched its own WRESAT satellite using a modified
Redstone rocket, and in October 1971 Britain orbited the Prospero satellite
using Black Arrow to launch it. It was, however, symptomatic of Britain’s
attitude to space development that, even before this flight, it had cancelled
Black Arrow.

In the end, Woomera succumbed to Britain’s withdrawal from large-scale
rocketry, its lukewarm enthusiasm for space exploration and its move towards
Europe and away from the Commonwealth. It is ironic that, as this book went
to press, a consortium of business interests was proposing an international
launch site at Cape York near the northern tip of Australia. But, in the
way that British politics destroyed Woomera, the Cape York project could
fall foul of international politics because of proposals to use Soviet Zenit
rockets and the fear of too much competition in space launch facilities.

This excellent volume deserves a wider readership than I fear its price
will allow. It is expensive, but its content and scholarship make it almost
essential reading for anyone interested in the politics of international
collaborative technical ventures as well as for the space historian and
enthusiast.

* Australian Government Publishing Service, GPO Box 84, Canberra, ACT
2061. In Britain, copies can be ordered through Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office.

John Becklake is Head of Technology at the Science Museum, London.