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Kurd Lasswitz wrote "Two Planets" in 1897, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39598983 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39598983 > Lasswitz's Martians di
by walterbell 3y ago
Kurd Lasswitz wrote "Two Planets" in 1897, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39598983 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39598983
> Lasswitz's Martians differ little from man physically, but ethically, intellectually, scientifically, and socially they are the prototype of the ideal human being. They seek to educate man, asking in return only air and energy to supplement the diminished supplies in their own, older world.
The story revolves around a group of German scientists who, when seeking the North Pole, come upon a Martian settlement there..
A young German reader of "Two Planets", Wernher von Braun, would develop ballistic missiles for Germany/USA, rockets that launched the first US space satellite and the NASA launch vehicle that took Apollo to the Moon.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Martians_(scientists) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Martians_(scientists)
> Leo Szilard, who jokingly suggested that Hungary was a front for aliens from Mars, used this term. In an answer to the question of why there is no evidence of intelligent life beyond Earth (called the Fermi paradox) despite the high probability of it existing, Szilárd responded: "They are already here among us – they just call themselves Hungarians."
The group included Erdos and von Neumann.
- iamflimflam1 3y agoPossibly worth also including just how controversial Wernher von Braun is. Von Braun is a highly controversial figure widely seen as escaping justice for his Nazi war crimes due to the Americans' desire to beat the Soviets in the Cold War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wernher_von_Braun https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wernher_von_Braun
- alwa 3y agoAnd if we’ve come that far, we may as well mention Tom Lehrer’s classic song “Wernher Von Braun,” which, along with the rest of his work, Lehrer so generously released into the public domain: https://tomlehrersongs.com/wernher-von-braun/ https://tomlehrersongs.com/wernher-von-braun/
- hinkley 3y agoThat song shows up in For All Mankind.
- pc86 3y agoWhat does that have to do with the comment you're replying to? Edit: This is an honest question, I'm not familiar with the extent of his crimes, if any. It certainly doesn't seem like a clear-cut "he was an objectively evil man but we looked the other way" based on the Wikipedia article. It could very well be his account, which from a brief skim seems reasonable, is accurate?
- pdonis 3y ago> I'm not familiar with the extent of his crimes, if any. He was the Nazis' best rocket engineer, responsible for, among other things, the V2s that devastated much of London. By the standards of the Nuremberg trials, he probably should have been tried and convicted. But he was never even accused, because the US wanted his rocket expertise--by the time of the Nuremberg trials, he was already working for the US Army.
- nwienert 3y agoGenuine question - unless he was directly involved with the genocide, was he not doing the exact same thing the allies were doing? It’s not a war crime to participate in a war for your country. The US bombed German civilians and Japanese civilians in mass numbers.
- cyberpunk 3y agoMany would consider those war crimes also.
- dylan604 3y agoyes, but that side "won". so the important take away is that if you're going to commit war crimes, you must win the war to avoid being charged
- perihelions 3y agoThe atrocity is that von Braun's V-2 factory was an extermination-through-labor camp. About 12,000 people were forcibly worked and tortured to death to produce those weapons—numerically more deaths than V-2, as a weapon, caused in Britain. von Braun was aware of this, complicit in this, oversaw parts of it as a high-ranking SS officer: his Wikipedia entry quotes a survivor testifying "von Braun went to the concentration camp to pick slave laborers".
- perihelions 3y ago- "Former Buchenwald inmate Adam Cabala stated that von Braun went to the concentration camp to pick slave laborers:" - "... also the German scientists led by Prof. Wernher von Braun were aware of everything daily. As they went along the corridors, they saw the exhaustion of the inmates, their arduous work and their pain. Not one single time did Prof. Wernher von Braun protest against this cruelty during his frequent stays at Dora. Even the aspect of corpses did not touch him: On a small area near the ambulance shed, inmates tortured to death by slave labor and the terror of the overseers were piling up daily. But, Prof. Wernher von Braun passed them so close that he was almost touching the corpses.[63]" I agree with your comment. Let's never speak in respectful language about a Nazi SS officer. It's a loud silence when someone circles around the topic without mentioning it, as if there were some obligation of diplomacy—as if you owe tactfulness or professional courtesy to Nazis.
- TheVespasian 3y ago> It's a loud silence when someone circles around the topic without mentioning it It's a unique feature of American/Western historiography that would incline you to believe this. I find it interesting we don't have to tack on similar disclaimers when it comes to any other similarly horrible group throughout history; the brutality of the Caesars, the Chinese emperors, the Comanche -- forget about it: we can speak of them dispassionately, as non-temporal observers. But mere broaching of the subject of the Nazis requires confession that, let's repeat it in unison, they were evil.
- the_af 3y ago> the brutality of the Caesars, the Chinese emperors, the Comanche [...] we can speak of them dispassionately, as non-temporal observers [...] but mere broaching of the subject of the Nazis requires confession that, let's repeat it in unison, they were evil. There's the thing about temporal closeness and impact on actual politics and ideology. Nazism and Fascism's brands of ultra rightwing ideology still looms large in part of the world. And there are still people alive who lived through some of the horrors the Nazis inflicted upon the world. None lives today who saw Caesar's dictatorship. Nobody, to my mind, seriously worships Imperial China or wants a return of the Caesars. There are no Comanche atrocities apologists (of note). But Nazism and its modern day offshoots are still worshipped by enough people that every mention of people related to Nazism must be peppered with these disclaimers. It's important to note Von Braun was an unapologetic nazi and that he should not be celebrated as a person.
- codedokode 3y agoDoes this mean that Americans helped a criminal to escape justice?
- AlgorithmicTime 3y ago[dead]
- mkl 3y agoNot one, many. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731#:~:text=those%20captured%20by%20the%20United%20States%20were%20secretly%20given%20immunity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731#:~:text=those%20captu...
- soperj 3y agoThey did that with all the Japanese to get info on biological weapons. Or check out the Monster of the Shōwa era (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobusuke_Kishi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobusuke_Kishi), who was originally held for war crimes, and then became prime minister.
- wvbdmp 3y agoWernher von Braun himself also wrote probably the first serious treatise on human missions to mars as well as a science fiction novel on the topic in 1948. Apparently the original German novel remains unpublished, but there is an English translation available. It’s set in 1980. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mars_Project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mars_Project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Mars:_A_Technical_Tale https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Mars:_A_Technical_Tale Check out the second link’s section about “the Elon”.
- ffhhj 3y ago"Elon Gates to reach the stars"
- Dr_Birdbrain 3y agoAre the Elon Gates made of sugar, I. E. Zucker? Elon Zucker Gates to reach the stars?
- TeMPOraL 3y agoWho can tell? All we know for sure is that taking in economic considerations elon gates the timeline. (I'll show myself out.)
- dylan604 3y ago> "They are already here among us – they just call themselves Hungarians." Do Germans also have jokes like "how many Hungarians does it take to screw in a light bulb"?
- obfuscator 3y agoThose exist here at the expense of different peoples, depending where you are in Germany. Most popular, from what I can tell, are East Frisians, but that has to do with a comedian who made a lot of those jokes (Otto Waalkes).
- ahazred8ta 3y agoEast Frisian jokes on WP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Frisian_jokes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Frisian_jokes