By Martin Weil
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Ernst Stuhlinger, 94, who became a pioneering figure in the U.S. space program after coming to this country from Germany following World War II, died May 25 at his home in Huntsville, Ala.
During a long career in Europe and the United States, Dr. Stuhlinger received a PhD in physics, fought in the German army at Stalingrad, worked on the German rocket program under Wernher Von Braun and went on to play a significant role in the U.S. space program, again under Von Braun.
Ralph Petroff, a Huntsville friend and neighbor, said Dr. Stuhlinger died of "complications of old age."
Trained in physics rather than engineering, he was Von Braun's "chief scientist," said Petroff, who has been active in preserving aspects of the space program's history.
Petroff said Dr. Stuhlinger was one of the chief figures of "the golden age of space exploration" and a visionary who helped shape goals, missions and techniques.
Creative and original, "he was a great theoretician," said Petroff, but he also was an extremely practical man, who built a key piece of equipment in his garage that ensured the success of the first U.S. satellite, Explorer I.
Moreover, Petroff said, Dr. Stuhlinger "was enormously grateful to the United States" for his life here. Having seen firsthand the effects of the erosion of civil liberties in Nazi Germany, "he was more than delighted to live in a free society."
Fred Ordway, a veteran of the U.S. rocketry program, emphasized Dr. Stuhlinger's contributions to an important method of propelling spacecraft on interplanetary voyages.
Reducing weight is vital on such missions, and Dr. Stuhlinger's designs essentially eliminated the need to carry and burn large quantities of fuel. His designs in effect converted energy from the sunlight that streams through space into the motion of tiny charged particles that gave the craft the needed thrust.
"He was one of the practical fathers of ion propulsion" said Ordway, who served as a scientific and technical adviser to the 1968 science-fiction film "2001: A Space Odyssey."
Dr. Stuhlinger was the author of "Ion Propulsion for Space Flight" (1964).
As chief of science for Von Braun, Ordway said, Dr. Stuhlinger's role was to "assure maximum scientific input into the rocket systems" that were being developed.
He was deeply involved in providing the instrumentation for spacecraft and in helping develop the research equipment they carried. This responsibility received formal recognition, Ordway said, in Dr. Stuhlinger's title of associate director for science in Von Braun's organization.
Ernst Stuhlinger was born in Niederrimbach, Germany, on Dec. 19, 1913, and received a PhD from the University of Tübingen.
He was a hardy young man who rode over all the mountain passes of the Alps on a bicycle without a gearshift, Petroff said.
Dr. Stuhlinger was a university professor, Petroff said, when he was drafted into the German army and placed as a private in a unit that was sent to the Russian front to try to free the German forces encircled at Stalingrad.
"I was a PhD Pfc," Petroff quoted him as saying.
He later joined Von Braun at the German rocket center at Peenemünde, where he worked on the improvement of the V-2 rocket guidance system. The V-2 wreaked havoc in London toward the end of World War II.
In an article written for the Huntsville Times in 1995, Dr. Stuhlinger said of such work: "We were convinced that the war would be over before new systems could be used on military rockets. . . . We were convinced that somehow our work would find application in future rockets that would not aim at London, but at the moon."
He was brought to this country with Von Braun and others from his team after the war, became a citizen, appreciated the warmth with which he was received and "loved everything about America," Petroff said.
Survivors include his wife, two sons and a daughter.