Wernher Von Braun was the driving force behind the Saturn rocket. He was a former Nazi SS member who was pals with Hitler and was instrumental in developing several of the WW 2 era German "V" weapons. The V stood for Vengeance. If he were not such a brilliant scientist he probably would have been hung at the conclusion of the war, but he was universally recognized as being too brilliant to execute. The powers that be who decided to bring him to the USA obviously made a very wise decision.
In the 80s several German scientists were investigated for wartime crimes, stripped of their US citizenship and deported to Germany. One of them was a colleague of Von Braun, Arthur Rudolf. During the war he was involved in the use of slave labor in an underground V2 factory, where thousands died of overwork and starvation. Another colleague of Von Braun at NASA experimented on concentration camp inmates, putting them in ice water or decompression chambers to test the survivability of downed airmen. Von Braun was right in the middle of all of this... And saw nothing
The little video on Google today is dang cool. Get to listen to astronaut Mike Collins tell the story about the day while watching a pretty cool little animation. Definitely worth a watch today. https://www.google.com/
Me and an ol Restoration Guy ar work were talking about this the other day. Von Braun. What we were doing was SO secret. We destroyed everything That he engineered. Because we did not want the Russians to get any of our technology.
Another cool set of images from my Dads Apollo history. It's awesome that he got to know and be friends with so many that people of the 60's and 70's aspired to be. Cool autograph from Fred Haise..
This song by David Bowie/ And all the background effects by Mr. Wakemen of the Super Band Yes. Was released 9 days before the landing on the moon. Bowie was a staple in my house. My sister was 4 yrs. older than me. I use to listen to her albums and her tie stick.
