FROM THE CHIEF HISTORIAN BORIS CHERTOK'S Rockets and ...

nasa history division
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Obituaries (continued)
Then there was the 50th-anniversary celebration of the launching and orbiting of
Explorer 1, America’s frst artifcial satellite, an event especially dear to Dannenberg.
In the unexpected absence of Ernst Stuhlinger due to illness, Dannenberg was the
only “old-timer” on a retrospective panel that National Space Society executive
director George Whitesides and I chaired on 31 January 2008 at the Von Braun
Center in downtown Huntsville. Following an introduction by overall event coordinator
Ralph Petroff—there were other panels—our panel got to work. Its members
were Steven J. Dick, NASA Chief Historian; Roger D. Launius, Senior Curator
at the National Air and Space Museum; and Dwayne Day, Space Studies Board,
National Academies of Science. Our special panel guest that day was Natalya
Koroleva, daughter of Sergei Korolev, von Braun’s counterpart in the Soviet Union
and father of the Sputnik satellite series.
That evening, we all adjourned to the brand new Davidson Center for Space
Exploration at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center, where the celebration continued
for hours under the horizontally mounted, fully restored Saturn V-500 D/F. No
one was more wide awake than Konrad Dannenberg when, accompanied by his
devoted wife Jackie, he was presented a special Explorer 1 award by Major General
James R. Myles, commander of the U.S. Army Aviation and Missile Command.
One often forgets that Explorer 1 was the creation of the Army Ballistic Missile
Agency; the fight occurred 2½ years before von Braun’s rocket team became part
of NASA.
The last time I saw my friend Konrad was in Huntsville during a visit tied to
a 7 February 2009 Year of Apollo gala banquet in the same Davidson Center.
Knowing that Dannenberg had counted on participating, I was disheartened to
learn that he was hospitalized. I visited him at his bedside in Huntsville Hospital
the next morning and found him pale and weak. Learning from Jackie that he
was to be released to a rehab center, I shared some optimism and was pleasantly
surprised when I visited him the afternoon of the 12th, the day before my return to
Washington. He seemed a different person, looking forward to rehab procedures
and changing to a new room.
But it was not to be. Four days later, my friend of more than half a century departed
this Earth forever.
Konrad Dannenberg is survived by his second wife of 18 years, Jacquelyn Staiger,
whom he had married in Plymouth, Massachusetts, on 31 March 1990; his son Klaus;
daughter-in-law Betty; and two grand- and four great-grandchildren. Dannenberg’s
frst wife, Ingeborg, died in 1988; they had married in Zinnowitz, Germany, near
Peenemünde, in early April 1944.
Acknowledgments
I am deeply appreciative to Konrad Dannenberg’s wife Jackie and his son Klaus for
critically reviewing the text, flling in blanks, and patiently answering questions. To
them, Brenda Carr, Ray Cronise, and Ralph Petroff go my sincere thanks for helping
locate photographs; in the case of the Cronise image of Dannenberg and Burt Rutan
together, it is copyright 2004. To NASA chief historian Steven Dick, I express my
gratitude for inviting me to remember a friend and colleague of over half a century,
Konrad Dannenberg.