Romanian-German physicist and one of the three founding theorists of modern rocketry, teacher of Wernher von Braun, and a consultant at Redstone Arsenal in the mid-1950s.
The statements
In the mid-1950s Oberth said publicly, more than once, that he believed the flying saucers were real, were controlled by intelligent beings, and came from another solar system. Coming from the man who wrote Die Rakete zu den Planetenräumen in 1923, the remarks carried further than anything a ufologist could have said, and they are still quoted seventy years later.
What they are worth
They are an opinion, offered without evidence, by a distinguished engineer working well outside his field of competence, and they should be weighed as such. Their real significance is sociological: they are the earliest instance of a pattern the record keeps producing, in which a credentialled figure’s private conviction is treated as though it were a finding. The Day After Roswell routes part of its case through an account of Oberth briefings for which no document exists.
Connections
Wernher von Braun · Redstone Arsenal · The Day After Roswell · Philip J. Corso · Operation Paperclip · Extraterrestrial Hypothesis