9 ms·

Qian Xuesen dies at 98; Co-Founder of JPL and China's space program (2009)

159 points by yapcguy 13y ago

Create 13y ago
"Scientists study the world as it is, engineers create the world that never has been." Theodore von Kármán
- dkural 13y ago
  Except it turns out often scientists and engineers are one and the same person.
- PavlovsCat 13y ago
  "Too often is the inventor the faustian idealist, who wants to improve the world, but fails at the hard realities. If he wants to realize his ideas, he has to cooperate with powers which have a better sense of reality than him. Today such powers are, without making a value statement, primarily military and managers. [..] From my experience the chances of an individiual to defend themselves against such pacts are rather low." -- Konrad Zuse
monsterix 13y ago
So was he really a spy, or the suspicions were unfounded? If latter, then the cost of losing his talent and subsequent achievements to another nation seem quite high.
- jjoonathan 13y ago
  > his brilliant career in the United States came to a screeching halt in 1950, when the FBI accused him of being a member of a subversive organization Yep, looks like the FBI created the problem they were ineptly trying to prevent.
  - salient 13y ago
    And more than a half a century later, nothing changed: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-fbi-hatched-some-crazy-terror-plots-2013-3 http://www.businessinsider.com/the-fbi-hatched-some-crazy-te...
  - protomyth 13y ago
    from the article: Qian returned to Caltech in 1949 and a year later faced the accusation by two former members of the Los Angeles Police Department's "Red Squad" that he was a card-carrying member of the Communist Party. thanks LAPD
  - shiven 13y ago
    And everyone needs to ask how many deserving scientists are being mistreated in a similar manner by being labeled as bogeymen with du jour-isms of our time.
    - yetanotherphd 13y ago
      James Watson for starters
- beachstartup 13y ago
  > So was he really a spy, or the suspicions were unfounded? for a question like this to appear on HN makes me realize why mccarthy-era tactics were popular for so long. they obviously work, even on smart people, and even in retrospect.
  - malandrew 13y ago
    Yup. If they had no solid evidence, they should have left the man alone and continued to support him diligently. If you don't have proof, you have hearsay, and hearsay is not something worth persecuting someone over ever. Whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty. If he truly was a spy, giving secrets to China, then he would have eventually been caught in the act with irrefutable proof. Willingly forcing him out with all that knowledge and talent strikes me as incredibly naïve. If someone produces excellent, productive research, and that research is leaking, simply ratchet up security around the research until the leaks stop. If there is a spy, they will eventually look around at all the security measures and consider the risk to their life and liberty to be too great to justify leaking information further. At that point, leaks will stop, but good research will continue, and that outcome provides much greater utility than the alternatives. People are often too preoccupied with persecution that they view the absence of persecuting anyone of something as wrong. In the US we are preoccupied with the idea that someone, somewhere may be doing something wrong and that we should be punishing that person because they deserve it. In this case (and in most cases) persecution didn't solve the problem, but tightened security would have.
    - jackpirate 13y ago
      >they will eventually look around at all the security measures and consider the risk to their life and liberty to be too great to justify leaking information further. This never happens in espionage. Once you go down that rabbit hole even a little, the people you're giving information to own you. They have the power to instantly ruin your life. If you stop giving them information, they inform on you. Most spies never wanted to be spies. They got sucked into a crappy situation by making one crappy decision, then they're stuck with it forever.
- protomyth 13y ago
  "It was the stupidest thing this country ever did," former Navy Secretary Dan Kimball later said, according to Aviation Week. "He was no more a Communist than I was, and we forced him to go." I would imagine his opinion might count for something.
- yeukhon 13y ago
  It's hard to justify. I am not going to say he can't be a spy. As a Chinese immigrant, many things you do can make you guilty of treason. There are many things your "friends" would disagree otherwise. I say he probably wasn't interested in helping the Chinese government (both Nationalist and Communist). I think he likes being in his laboratory and doesn't care about politics. But if no evidence ever found, our government should apologize.
dontfall 13y ago
Anti-male hysteria. That's why. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Just_Didn%27t_Do_It https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Just_Didn%27t_Do_It Comment referred to this story (where new accounts are not allowed to post): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6904274 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6904274
mythealias 13y ago
In his [autobiography][1] von Karman has a whole chapter (or two) dedicated to justifying why deporting Tsien just based on suspicion was a bad decision. [1]: http://www.amazon.com/The-Wind-Beyond-Theodore-Pathfinder/dp/0316907537 http://www.amazon.com/The-Wind-Beyond-Theodore-Pathfinder/dp...
- yapcguy 13y ago
  Imagine, in your twilight years, being able to watch the culmination of your life's work. "The elderly Qian was able to watch China's first manned space mission on television from his hospital bed." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qian_Xuesen http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qian_Xuesen Whatever the politics, he was recognized by his peers as being a genius, a great rocket scientist, and that will be his legacy.
gwern 13y ago
I would not forget that he was co-founder of China's missile program too. And given how many Chinese-Americans turn out to be passing secrets to China, it's pretty disingenuous to go 'oh, he only worked for them because the US mistreated him!' He would be far from the first person whose loyalties turned out to lie where you would expect them to lie. Let them go home? This issue has come up before. The Feds locked up H. S. Tsien [Qian Xuesen] back in the 50s because they thought he was pro-Chinese and would aid the Chinese rocket program. When they finally let him go, that’s exactly what he did. There have been many cases in which key individuals have been allowed to go home and fight with their homies, due to chivalry or some other form of stupidity. in 1861, the Feds let many officers go home and fight for the Confederacy. Radomir Putnik, chief of the Serbian general staff, was taking the waters in Austria when the First World War broke out. They let him go home – were they ever sorry! Gernot Zippe, an Austrian POW in a Siberian camp, built a workable centrifuge for separating isotopes. Yet, to my lasting surprise, the Soviets let him go in 1956. He became the Johnny Appleseed of nuclear proliferation [along with Eisenhower - Atoms for Peace]. https://westhunt.wordpress.com/2013/10/01/who-can-you-trust/ https://westhunt.wordpress.com/2013/10/01/who-can-you-trust/
- mikeash 13y ago
  It's disingenuous to say that he abandoned ship because he was mistreated because other people of the same ethnicity were spies? What kind of insane reasoning is that? Either there are good reasons to believe he was a spy, or there are not. If there are not, then it's absolutely reasonable to say that he went to China because he was mistreated. If there are, then let's hear what they are, but "other Chinese people were spies" is not remotely a good reason.
  - gwern 13y ago
    > It's disingenuous to say that he abandoned ship because he was mistreated because other people of the same ethnicity were spies? What kind of insane reasoning is that? It's non-naive reasoning based on the knowledge that yes, people do care about their own race and ethnicity and may have multiple loyalties, and the world doesn't work based on a simple 'you are 100% loyal to the country you are in' bit of reasoning. Try engaging in less abuse and more probabilistic reasoning. > Either there are good reasons to believe he was a spy, or there are not. Either this is a false dichotomy, or it is not. > If there are, then let's hear what they are, but "other Chinese people were spies" is not remotely a good reason. Yes, it is. If other Chinese people were spies at above base-rates, then one will be more accurate in finding traitors by taking this into account.
HistoryInAction 13y ago
Linus Pauling quit Caltech over this, having fought to the highest levels of the government to allow Tsien to visit his dying (father? grandfather?) in China. The man was accused of being a Communist so harshly, he decided he'd rather actually be one and returned home regardless of the US refusal to grant him a visa to make it a round-trip. What a waste. re: http://books.google.com/books?id=NrG7fgW0ybEC&lpg=PA112&ots=2ftc1TuHSh&dq=pauling%20tsien&pg=PA112#v=onepage&q=pauling%20tsien&f=false http://books.google.com/books?id=NrG7fgW0ybEC&lpg=PA112&ots=... and http://archives.caltech.edu/news/tsien.html http://archives.caltech.edu/news/tsien.html
xcyu 13y ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qian_Xuesen#Return_to_China http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qian_Xuesen#Return_to_China He seemed to have had a very interesting political career in china as well.
dferlemann 13y ago
Back I was in China, I remember reading news that appears Chinese government was really happy Dr Qian was forced to return. Dr. Qian is really high profile in the sense of academic achievement. I don't think there is high enough salary to attract him back to China with his own free will. It got me thinking. Speculatively, is it possible that Chinese government made a deal with US government secretly to get him back? There are a lot of deals between two governments...
- aptwebapps 13y ago
  I can't imagine what that deal would have looked like but I guess if they were clever enough they could have caused him to fall under suspicion pretty easily.
  - dferlemann 13y ago
    I'm thinking more in the form of technological trade.
- yetanotherphd 13y ago
  >There are a lot of deals between two governments... What kind of deals are you referring to?

159 points by yapcguy 13y ago

Create 13y ago

"Scientists study the world as it is, engineers create the world that never has been." Theodore von Kármán

dkural 13y ago
Except it turns out often scientists and engineers are one and the same person.
PavlovsCat 13y ago
"Too often is the inventor the faustian idealist, who wants to improve the world, but fails at the hard realities. If he wants to realize his ideas, he has to cooperate with powers which have a better sense of reality than him. Today such powers are, without making a value statement, primarily military and managers. [..] From my experience the chances of an individiual to defend themselves against such pacts are rather low." -- Konrad Zuse

monsterix 13y ago

So was he really a spy, or the suspicions were unfounded? If latter, then the cost of losing his talent and subsequent achievements to another nation seem quite high.

jjoonathan 13y ago
> his brilliant career in the United States came to a screeching halt in 1950, when the FBI accused him of being a member of a subversive organization Yep, looks like the FBI created the problem they were ineptly trying to prevent.
- salient 13y ago
  And more than a half a century later, nothing changed: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-fbi-hatched-some-crazy-terror-plots-2013-3 http://www.businessinsider.com/the-fbi-hatched-some-crazy-te...
- protomyth 13y ago
  from the article: Qian returned to Caltech in 1949 and a year later faced the accusation by two former members of the Los Angeles Police Department's "Red Squad" that he was a card-carrying member of the Communist Party. thanks LAPD
- shiven 13y ago
  And everyone needs to ask how many deserving scientists are being mistreated in a similar manner by being labeled as bogeymen with du jour-isms of our time.
  - yetanotherphd 13y ago
    James Watson for starters
beachstartup 13y ago
> So was he really a spy, or the suspicions were unfounded? for a question like this to appear on HN makes me realize why mccarthy-era tactics were popular for so long. they obviously work, even on smart people, and even in retrospect.
- malandrew 13y ago
  Yup. If they had no solid evidence, they should have left the man alone and continued to support him diligently. If you don't have proof, you have hearsay, and hearsay is not something worth persecuting someone over ever. Whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty. If he truly was a spy, giving secrets to China, then he would have eventually been caught in the act with irrefutable proof. Willingly forcing him out with all that knowledge and talent strikes me as incredibly naïve. If someone produces excellent, productive research, and that research is leaking, simply ratchet up security around the research until the leaks stop. If there is a spy, they will eventually look around at all the security measures and consider the risk to their life and liberty to be too great to justify leaking information further. At that point, leaks will stop, but good research will continue, and that outcome provides much greater utility than the alternatives. People are often too preoccupied with persecution that they view the absence of persecuting anyone of something as wrong. In the US we are preoccupied with the idea that someone, somewhere may be doing something wrong and that we should be punishing that person because they deserve it. In this case (and in most cases) persecution didn't solve the problem, but tightened security would have.
  - jackpirate 13y ago
    >they will eventually look around at all the security measures and consider the risk to their life and liberty to be too great to justify leaking information further. This never happens in espionage. Once you go down that rabbit hole even a little, the people you're giving information to own you. They have the power to instantly ruin your life. If you stop giving them information, they inform on you. Most spies never wanted to be spies. They got sucked into a crappy situation by making one crappy decision, then they're stuck with it forever.
protomyth 13y ago
"It was the stupidest thing this country ever did," former Navy Secretary Dan Kimball later said, according to Aviation Week. "He was no more a Communist than I was, and we forced him to go." I would imagine his opinion might count for something.
yeukhon 13y ago
It's hard to justify. I am not going to say he can't be a spy. As a Chinese immigrant, many things you do can make you guilty of treason. There are many things your "friends" would disagree otherwise. I say he probably wasn't interested in helping the Chinese government (both Nationalist and Communist). I think he likes being in his laboratory and doesn't care about politics. But if no evidence ever found, our government should apologize.

dontfall 13y ago

Anti-male hysteria. That's why. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Just_Didn%27t_Do_It https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Just_Didn%27t_Do_It Comment referred to this story (where new accounts are not allowed to post): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6904274 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6904274

mythealias 13y ago

In his [autobiography][1] von Karman has a whole chapter (or two) dedicated to justifying why deporting Tsien just based on suspicion was a bad decision. [1]: http://www.amazon.com/The-Wind-Beyond-Theodore-Pathfinder/dp/0316907537 http://www.amazon.com/The-Wind-Beyond-Theodore-Pathfinder/dp...

yapcguy 13y ago
Imagine, in your twilight years, being able to watch the culmination of your life's work. "The elderly Qian was able to watch China's first manned space mission on television from his hospital bed." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qian_Xuesen http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qian_Xuesen Whatever the politics, he was recognized by his peers as being a genius, a great rocket scientist, and that will be his legacy.

gwern 13y ago

I would not forget that he was co-founder of China's missile program too. And given how many Chinese-Americans turn out to be passing secrets to China, it's pretty disingenuous to go 'oh, he only worked for them because the US mistreated him!' He would be far from the first person whose loyalties turned out to lie where you would expect them to lie. Let them go home? This issue has come up before. The Feds locked up H. S. Tsien [Qian Xuesen] back in the 50s because they thought he was pro-Chinese and would aid the Chinese rocket program. When they finally let him go, that’s exactly what he did. There have been many cases in which key individuals have been allowed to go home and fight with their homies, due to chivalry or some other form of stupidity. in 1861, the Feds let many officers go home and fight for the Confederacy. Radomir Putnik, chief of the Serbian general staff, was taking the waters in Austria when the First World War broke out. They let him go home – were they ever sorry! Gernot Zippe, an Austrian POW in a Siberian camp, built a workable centrifuge for separating isotopes. Yet, to my lasting surprise, the Soviets let him go in 1956. He became the Johnny Appleseed of nuclear proliferation [along with Eisenhower - Atoms for Peace]. https://westhunt.wordpress.com/2013/10/01/who-can-you-trust/ https://westhunt.wordpress.com/2013/10/01/who-can-you-trust/

mikeash 13y ago
It's disingenuous to say that he abandoned ship because he was mistreated because other people of the same ethnicity were spies? What kind of insane reasoning is that? Either there are good reasons to believe he was a spy, or there are not. If there are not, then it's absolutely reasonable to say that he went to China because he was mistreated. If there are, then let's hear what they are, but "other Chinese people were spies" is not remotely a good reason.
- gwern 13y ago
  > It's disingenuous to say that he abandoned ship because he was mistreated because other people of the same ethnicity were spies? What kind of insane reasoning is that? It's non-naive reasoning based on the knowledge that yes, people do care about their own race and ethnicity and may have multiple loyalties, and the world doesn't work based on a simple 'you are 100% loyal to the country you are in' bit of reasoning. Try engaging in less abuse and more probabilistic reasoning. > Either there are good reasons to believe he was a spy, or there are not. Either this is a false dichotomy, or it is not. > If there are, then let's hear what they are, but "other Chinese people were spies" is not remotely a good reason. Yes, it is. If other Chinese people were spies at above base-rates, then one will be more accurate in finding traitors by taking this into account.

HistoryInAction 13y ago

Linus Pauling quit Caltech over this, having fought to the highest levels of the government to allow Tsien to visit his dying (father? grandfather?) in China. The man was accused of being a Communist so harshly, he decided he'd rather actually be one and returned home regardless of the US refusal to grant him a visa to make it a round-trip. What a waste. re: http://books.google.com/books?id=NrG7fgW0ybEC&lpg=PA112&ots=2ftc1TuHSh&dq=pauling%20tsien&pg=PA112#v=onepage&q=pauling%20tsien&f=false http://books.google.com/books?id=NrG7fgW0ybEC&lpg=PA112&ots=... and http://archives.caltech.edu/news/tsien.html http://archives.caltech.edu/news/tsien.html

xcyu 13y ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qian_Xuesen#Return_to_China http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qian_Xuesen#Return_to_China He seemed to have had a very interesting political career in china as well.

dferlemann 13y ago

Back I was in China, I remember reading news that appears Chinese government was really happy Dr Qian was forced to return. Dr. Qian is really high profile in the sense of academic achievement. I don't think there is high enough salary to attract him back to China with his own free will. It got me thinking. Speculatively, is it possible that Chinese government made a deal with US government secretly to get him back? There are a lot of deals between two governments...

aptwebapps 13y ago
I can't imagine what that deal would have looked like but I guess if they were clever enough they could have caused him to fall under suspicion pretty easily.
- dferlemann 13y ago
  I'm thinking more in the form of technological trade.
yetanotherphd 13y ago
>There are a lot of deals between two governments... What kind of deals are you referring to?