Editing Hermann Oberth (section)

== Post-war period ==
[[File:Officials of the Army Ballistic Missile Agency (16316242630).jpg|thumb|Hermann Oberth (forefront) with officials of the [[Army Ballistic Missile Agency]] at Huntsville, Alabama in 1956. Left to right around Oberth: [[Ernst Stuhlinger]] (seated), Major General [[Holger Toftoy]], Commanding Officer responsible for "Project Paperclip", [[Wernher von Braun]], Director, Development Operations Division, [[Robert Lusser]], a Project Paperclip engineer who returned to Germany in 1959.]]

Oberth was not involved in the American "[[Project Paperclip]]" because he was not involved in the development of the Aggregat 4 - later called "Vergeltungswaffe V2". For Oberth there was no employment in Germany either as a teacher of physics or mathematics or as a scientist. That is why Hermann Oberth went to [[Switzerland]] in 1948 and worked there both as a scientific consultant and as an author for the specialist journal ''Interavia''. In the years 1950 to 1953 he was in the service of the [[Italian Navy]] and developed a solid fuel rocket. In 1953, Oberth returned to Feucht, Germany, to publish his book ''Menschen im Weltraum'' (''Man into Space''), in which he described his ideas for space-based [[reflecting telescope]]s, [[space station]]s, electric-powered [[Spacecraft|spaceships]], and [[space suit]]s. Oberth eventually worked from 1955 for his former assistant Wernher von Braun, who was developing space rockets for NASA in Huntsville, Alabama. Among other things, Oberth was involved in preparing the study "The Development of Space Technology in the Next Ten Years". In 1958, Oberth returned to Feucht, Germany, where he published his ideas for a lunar exploration vehicle, a "moon catapult", and "damped" helicopters and airplanes. In 1961, Oberth returned to the United States, where he worked for the [[Convair|Convair Corporation]] as a technical consultant for the [[Atlas (missile)|Atlas missile]] program. He retired in 1962.<ref name="Fritz"/><ref name="Freeman"/><ref name="Rauschenbach"/><ref name="Barth"/>

During the 1950s and 1960s, Oberth offered his opinions regarding [[unidentified flying object]]s (UFOs). He was a supporter of the [[extraterrestrial hypothesis]] for the origin of the UFOs that were seen from Earth. For example, in an article in ''The American Weekly'' magazine of 24 October 1954, Oberth stated: "It is my thesis that flying saucers are real, and that they are space ships from another solar system. I think that they possibly are manned by intelligent observers who are members of a race that may have been investigating our earth for centuries".<ref>[http://www.mufon.com/MUFONNews/znews_oberth.html Schuessler, John L., "Statements about Flying Saucers and Extraterrestrial Life Made by Prof. Hermann Oberth, German Rocket Scientist" 2002] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101125162907/http://mufon.com/MUFONNews/znews_oberth.html |date=25 November 2010 }}; for example, the ''American Weekly'' article also appeared in ''[[The Washington Post and Times-Herald]]'', pg. AW4, and [https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=Pm8xAAAAIBAJ&sjid=MRAEAAAAIBAJ&pg=5451,3094226&dq=hermann+oberth&hl=en ''Milwaukee Sentinel''] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160722060947/https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=Pm8xAAAAIBAJ&sjid=MRAEAAAAIBAJ&pg=5451,3094226&dq=hermann+oberth&hl=en |date=22 July 2016 }}</ref> He also published in the second edition of ''Flying Saucer Review'', an article titled, "They Come From Outer Space". He discussed the history of reports of "strange luminous objects" in the sky, mentioning that the earliest historical case is of "Shining Shields" reported by [[Pliny the Elder]]. He wrote, "Having weighed all the pros and cons, I find the explanation of flying discs from outer space the most likely one. I call this the "Uraniden" hypothesis, because from our viewpoint the hypothetical beings appear to come from the sky (Greek – 'Uranos')."<ref>Hermann Oberth, "They Come From Outer Space", ''Flying Saucer Review'', Volume 1 Number 2, May–June 1955, pp. 12–14.</ref>