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> Crying "No fair! You stole it!" sounds more like a petulant child than anything else. It's also exactly what made nasa in the first place, with America steal

> Crying "No fair! You stole it!" sounds more like a petulant child than anything else. It's also exactly what made nasa in the first place, with America stealing much of rocket science from the Germans in the wake of WW2.

brobdingnagians 5y ago
I was just telling my wife about this yesterday and how Wernher von Braun basically saved the US rocket program; or, at least, it was having major difficulties before, and major successes after he joined up. And, in addition, the Germans in the 1930s got a lot of good information from Robert H. Goddard, the inventor who built the first liquid-fueled rocket; Werner von Braun said, about him, "His rockets ... may have been rather crude by present-day standards, but they blazed the trail and incorporated many features used in our most modern rockets and space vehicles." There was a large exchange of information in most areas of physics between very illustrious German and American physicists. I think that having more people doing more science enriches everyone. Without American and German scientists working sharing information, it would have taken a lot longer to have the space technology that we currently do. That is true even when two countries have political tension, as Germany and America had in the 1930s. China may have political rivalry with America, but science should take a lead in exchanging ideas, learning from each other, and developing new ideas that will enrich all of humanity.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- fsloth 5y ago
  Not only that, but the project director of the friggin Saturn V - Arthur Rudolph - was forced to rescind his US citizenship or face charges for war crimes because he had managed a factory during the war - Mittelwerk - that killed more forced labourers by building the V-2 than died in the V-2 bombings (20,000 vs 9,000 V-2 casualties). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Rudolph https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Rudolph https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mittelwerk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mittelwerk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mittelbau-Dora_concentration_camp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mittelbau-Dora_concentration_c... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-2_rocket https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-2_rocket
- reducesuffering 5y ago
  > I think that having more people doing more science enriches everyone. Without American and German scientists working sharing information, it would have taken a lot longer to have the space technology that we currently do. > That is true even when two countries have political tension, as Germany and America had in the 1930s. China may have political rivalry with America, but science should take a lead in exchanging ideas, learning from each other, and developing new ideas that will enrich all of humanity. You're only saying this because America stopped Germany. You might as well be telling the French why sharing their science with 1930's Germany is a net good. What about a hypothetical where that French 30's science was the defining factor in Germany being able to conquer them?
- abledon 5y ago
  > China may have political rivalry with America, but science should take a lead in exchanging ideas, learning from each other, and developing new ideas that will enrich all of humanity. What % of the scientific community would it take to convince their government to be open about sharing their knowledgebase? seems unrealistic with their current 'climate'.
- throw0101a 5y ago
  If anyone wants to get into some of the obscure history niches, see the book Ignition!: An informal history of liquid rocket propellants (ISBN13: 9780813507255): * https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/677285.Ignition_ https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/677285.Ignition_ It's not about rockets in general, but about rocket fuel specifically. It's the "#1 Best Seller in Petroleum (Engineering)" category: * https://www.amazon.com/Ignition-Informal-History-Liquid-Propellants/dp/0813595835 https://www.amazon.com/Ignition-Informal-History-Liquid-Prop...
- JKCalhoun 5y ago
  > And, in addition, the Germans in the 1930s got a lot of good information from Robert H. Goddard Is that true? I have read that, unlike the German rocket club, Goddard was very secretive — more like closed-source. Thanks to the open German rocket club, they solved the engineering difficulty of a high speed pump to deliver fuel to the engines. Goddard appears to have stalled there. So the U.S. gets the German scientists, some hardware. They seem to have wanted to have both a peaceful, scientific track for rocket research and a military one. Werner got the military track with the Army. Developing, among other things, the Redstone. The peaceful, scientific track became NASA when Sputnik circled the Earth. Failing to get their own JPL rockets off the ground, the U.S. turns to the Army .... hey, Werner, anything you can do with your Redstone to help us out here? That's my take anyhow. Someone with deeper historical knowledge can correct my wild generalizations.
  - 8bitsrule 5y ago
    "Wernher von Braun, a German physicist and a friend of Goddard [also a PhD physicist; emph. mine], instituted the German Rocket Society in 1927, following Goddard’s March 1926 launch." [0] Goddard's early launches were made possible by a Smithsonian grant of $5000 by Charles Greeley Abbot from the Hodgkins fund. After being ridiculed in the NYT in 1920 he got more cautious about PR. After a Lindbergh visit, the Guggenheims helped him find another $100,000. Germany didn't need 'help' from Goddard; they had Oberth, who did a PhD thesis on rocketry in 1922, and published The Rocket into Planetary Space in 1923. "Space historians typically name three pioneers as the founding fathers of astronautics: Tsiolkovsky [a Russian teachr when Goddard was still a teen], the American Robert Goddard, and the German (although Romanian-born) Hermann Oberth." [1] [0] https://www.famousscientists.org/robert-goddard/ https://www.famousscientists.org/robert-goddard/ [1] https://www.airspacemag.com/space/russias-long-love-affair-with-space-19739095/ https://www.airspacemag.com/space/russias-long-love-affair-w...
seanmcdirmid 5y ago
The Americans got the scientists, the Russians got the technicians. They served as catalysts for both space programs, but there was also a lot of talent from else where (America is famous for deporting a Chinese rocket scientist in the 50s or 60s, giving a good start to their program).
varispeed 5y ago
Germans wouldn't have started the war without loans from the US or help from companies like IBM. So it's not so much as stealing, but rather trying to claw back some of the "investment" when the war machinery started to collapse.
- vimacs2 5y ago
  Yeah, this is complete nonsense. The science behind rockets were already being worked on long before WW2 or even the first expansion of territory of the Third Reich beyond the borders set at the closing of WW1. It's like when people gave credit to Hitler for infrastructure projects such as the Autobahns which were already in progress before he took office.
  - varispeed 5y ago
    I didn't say that only Germans had this technology. They have been doing a heavy research though and they didn't have to worry about human rights abuse and so on. It was valuable enough so that it was worth for the US to launch Operation Paperclip.
    - vimacs2 5y ago
      Sure but I'm not sure how their freedom from worrying about human rights abuse has anything at all to do with their rocket research. They never had any human test pilots or manned rocket vehicle tests (that are public record anyway). Perhaps, you confusing that with their medical research.
gutfhjkvdsw 5y ago
Is it really stealing when the individuals who did the work for America voluntarily left Germany due to its foray into authoritarianism? Seems more like a windfall for a country with better human rights than a theft, to me.
- finnh 5y ago
  That's not quite how it went down - the really top guys were running the show in Nazi Germany until the very end, and only came to the US after Germany lost the war. See siblings comments about Mittelwerk, eg. Also Chabon's (fictional) novel Moonglow covers some of this history well.
  - 908B64B197 5y ago
    The question is, were they allowed to leave Germany when the regime was still in place?
- adolph 5y ago
  Operation Paperclip was a secret US intelligence program in which more than 1,600 Nazi scientists, engineers, and technicians were taken from Nazi Germany to the United States for government employment after the end of World War II in Europe, primarily between 1945 and 1959. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip
  - freshair 5y ago
    "were taken" suggests they had no say in the matter, which is not true at least in the case of many. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wernher_von_Braun#Surrender_to_the_Americans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wernher_von_Braun#Surrender_to...
    - adolph 5y ago
      I think the phrase has several interpretations. The most basic is conveyance without judgement of human motives. To the extent that high value workers knew that they were treasure to be looted they might have decided that the US was a least worse option.
908B64B197 5y ago
I think a lot of German scientists were pretty happy to be "stolen" by a democracy and given the means to leave 1930's Germany. Not at all the same as what's going on right now [0] [0] https://www.justice.gov/usao-az/pr/former-raytheon-engineer-sentenced-exporting-sensitive-military-related-technology-china https://www.justice.gov/usao-az/pr/former-raytheon-engineer-...
- freshair 5y ago
  von Braun and his team specifically sought out Americans to surrender to. Characterizing a surrender as "theft" (as though people are property?!) is truly bizarre.

brobdingnagians 5y ago

I was just telling my wife about this yesterday and how Wernher von Braun basically saved the US rocket program; or, at least, it was having major difficulties before, and major successes after he joined up. And, in addition, the Germans in the 1930s got a lot of good information from Robert H. Goddard, the inventor who built the first liquid-fueled rocket; Werner von Braun said, about him, "His rockets ... may have been rather crude by present-day standards, but they blazed the trail and incorporated many features used in our most modern rockets and space vehicles." There was a large exchange of information in most areas of physics between very illustrious German and American physicists. I think that having more people doing more science enriches everyone. Without American and German scientists working sharing information, it would have taken a lot longer to have the space technology that we currently do. That is true even when two countries have political tension, as Germany and America had in the 1930s. China may have political rivalry with America, but science should take a lead in exchanging ideas, learning from each other, and developing new ideas that will enrich all of humanity.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
fsloth 5y ago
Not only that, but the project director of the friggin Saturn V - Arthur Rudolph - was forced to rescind his US citizenship or face charges for war crimes because he had managed a factory during the war - Mittelwerk - that killed more forced labourers by building the V-2 than died in the V-2 bombings (20,000 vs 9,000 V-2 casualties). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Rudolph https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Rudolph https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mittelwerk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mittelwerk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mittelbau-Dora_concentration_camp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mittelbau-Dora_concentration_c... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-2_rocket https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-2_rocket
reducesuffering 5y ago
> I think that having more people doing more science enriches everyone. Without American and German scientists working sharing information, it would have taken a lot longer to have the space technology that we currently do. > That is true even when two countries have political tension, as Germany and America had in the 1930s. China may have political rivalry with America, but science should take a lead in exchanging ideas, learning from each other, and developing new ideas that will enrich all of humanity. You're only saying this because America stopped Germany. You might as well be telling the French why sharing their science with 1930's Germany is a net good. What about a hypothetical where that French 30's science was the defining factor in Germany being able to conquer them?
abledon 5y ago
> China may have political rivalry with America, but science should take a lead in exchanging ideas, learning from each other, and developing new ideas that will enrich all of humanity. What % of the scientific community would it take to convince their government to be open about sharing their knowledgebase? seems unrealistic with their current 'climate'.
throw0101a 5y ago
If anyone wants to get into some of the obscure history niches, see the book Ignition!: An informal history of liquid rocket propellants (ISBN13: 9780813507255): * https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/677285.Ignition_ https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/677285.Ignition_ It's not about rockets in general, but about rocket fuel specifically. It's the "#1 Best Seller in Petroleum (Engineering)" category: * https://www.amazon.com/Ignition-Informal-History-Liquid-Propellants/dp/0813595835 https://www.amazon.com/Ignition-Informal-History-Liquid-Prop...
JKCalhoun 5y ago
> And, in addition, the Germans in the 1930s got a lot of good information from Robert H. Goddard Is that true? I have read that, unlike the German rocket club, Goddard was very secretive — more like closed-source. Thanks to the open German rocket club, they solved the engineering difficulty of a high speed pump to deliver fuel to the engines. Goddard appears to have stalled there. So the U.S. gets the German scientists, some hardware. They seem to have wanted to have both a peaceful, scientific track for rocket research and a military one. Werner got the military track with the Army. Developing, among other things, the Redstone. The peaceful, scientific track became NASA when Sputnik circled the Earth. Failing to get their own JPL rockets off the ground, the U.S. turns to the Army .... hey, Werner, anything you can do with your Redstone to help us out here? That's my take anyhow. Someone with deeper historical knowledge can correct my wild generalizations.
- 8bitsrule 5y ago
  "Wernher von Braun, a German physicist and a friend of Goddard [also a PhD physicist; emph. mine], instituted the German Rocket Society in 1927, following Goddard’s March 1926 launch." [0] Goddard's early launches were made possible by a Smithsonian grant of $5000 by Charles Greeley Abbot from the Hodgkins fund. After being ridiculed in the NYT in 1920 he got more cautious about PR. After a Lindbergh visit, the Guggenheims helped him find another $100,000. Germany didn't need 'help' from Goddard; they had Oberth, who did a PhD thesis on rocketry in 1922, and published The Rocket into Planetary Space in 1923. "Space historians typically name three pioneers as the founding fathers of astronautics: Tsiolkovsky [a Russian teachr when Goddard was still a teen], the American Robert Goddard, and the German (although Romanian-born) Hermann Oberth." [1] [0] https://www.famousscientists.org/robert-goddard/ https://www.famousscientists.org/robert-goddard/ [1] https://www.airspacemag.com/space/russias-long-love-affair-with-space-19739095/ https://www.airspacemag.com/space/russias-long-love-affair-w...

seanmcdirmid 5y ago

The Americans got the scientists, the Russians got the technicians. They served as catalysts for both space programs, but there was also a lot of talent from else where (America is famous for deporting a Chinese rocket scientist in the 50s or 60s, giving a good start to their program).

varispeed 5y ago

Germans wouldn't have started the war without loans from the US or help from companies like IBM. So it's not so much as stealing, but rather trying to claw back some of the "investment" when the war machinery started to collapse.

vimacs2 5y ago
Yeah, this is complete nonsense. The science behind rockets were already being worked on long before WW2 or even the first expansion of territory of the Third Reich beyond the borders set at the closing of WW1. It's like when people gave credit to Hitler for infrastructure projects such as the Autobahns which were already in progress before he took office.
- varispeed 5y ago
  I didn't say that only Germans had this technology. They have been doing a heavy research though and they didn't have to worry about human rights abuse and so on. It was valuable enough so that it was worth for the US to launch Operation Paperclip.
  - vimacs2 5y ago
    Sure but I'm not sure how their freedom from worrying about human rights abuse has anything at all to do with their rocket research. They never had any human test pilots or manned rocket vehicle tests (that are public record anyway). Perhaps, you confusing that with their medical research.

gutfhjkvdsw 5y ago

Is it really stealing when the individuals who did the work for America voluntarily left Germany due to its foray into authoritarianism? Seems more like a windfall for a country with better human rights than a theft, to me.

finnh 5y ago
That's not quite how it went down - the really top guys were running the show in Nazi Germany until the very end, and only came to the US after Germany lost the war. See siblings comments about Mittelwerk, eg. Also Chabon's (fictional) novel Moonglow covers some of this history well.
- 908B64B197 5y ago
  The question is, were they allowed to leave Germany when the regime was still in place?
adolph 5y ago
Operation Paperclip was a secret US intelligence program in which more than 1,600 Nazi scientists, engineers, and technicians were taken from Nazi Germany to the United States for government employment after the end of World War II in Europe, primarily between 1945 and 1959. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip
- freshair 5y ago
  "were taken" suggests they had no say in the matter, which is not true at least in the case of many. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wernher_von_Braun#Surrender_to_the_Americans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wernher_von_Braun#Surrender_to...
  - adolph 5y ago
    I think the phrase has several interpretations. The most basic is conveyance without judgement of human motives. To the extent that high value workers knew that they were treasure to be looted they might have decided that the US was a least worse option.

908B64B197 5y ago

I think a lot of German scientists were pretty happy to be "stolen" by a democracy and given the means to leave 1930's Germany. Not at all the same as what's going on right now [0] [0] https://www.justice.gov/usao-az/pr/former-raytheon-engineer-sentenced-exporting-sensitive-military-related-technology-china https://www.justice.gov/usao-az/pr/former-raytheon-engineer-...

freshair 5y ago
von Braun and his team specifically sought out Americans to surrender to. Characterizing a surrender as "theft" (as though people are property?!) is truly bizarre.