Wernher von Braun 1912 - 1977 
Posted on 02/07/2004 5:41:19 PM PST by bondserv
Wernher von Braun 1912 - 1977
“It’s not exactly rocket science, you know.” The cliche implies that rocket science is the epitome of something that is difficult, obscure, and abstruse; something comprehensible only by the brainiest of the smart. Names that qualify for the title “father of rocket science” include Tsiolkovsky, Goddard, and von Braun. But Konstantin Tsiolkovsky was mostly a visionary and chalkboard theorist, and Robert Goddard only targeted the upper atmosphere for his projects; he was also secretive and suspicious of others to a fault. Of the three, and any others that could be listed, Wernher von Braun has the prestige of actually taking mankind from the simple beginnings of rocketry all the way to the moon and the planets. His name is almost synonymous with rocket science. He is an icon of the space age. As we will see, he should be remembered for much more than that.
Von Braun (pronounced fon BROWN – and roll the R) is important in this series because he was recent enough to be in the living memory of many, and we have a great deal of documentation, photographs and motion pictures of him. Even young people (that is, anyone under 40) who did not live through the glory days of Apollo are all familiar with three of von Braun’s last great projects he took from vision to reality: the Space Shuttle, orbiting space stations and interplanetary travel. Unquestionably, he had a great deal of help. One does not do rocket science alone! At the height of the Apollo program, some 600,000 employees were involved in tasks from machining parts to managing large flight operations centers. Yet by wide consensus and by results achieved, Wernher von Braun was a giant among giants: highly regarded by his peers, respected by all who worked with him, a celebrity to the public, showered with honors, and unquestionably responsible for much of the success of the space program. Few have ever personally taken a dream of epic proportions to reality. The peaceful exploration of space! It was the stuff of dreams — dreams by Kepler, Jules Verne, science fiction novels and countless childhood imaginations, yet today it is almost too commonplace. Von Braun dreamed, but made it happen. He was the right man with the right stuff at the right time.
What kind of person was he? Many great scientists are quirkish or aloof in their personal lives, but we’re going to reveal a lesser-known side of von Braun, a spiritual side that kept him humble, grateful, unselfish, and strong. We’ll see a remarkably well-rounded individual, a family man who loved swimming and travel and popularizing science for children; a man who loved life, had charisma and energy and dignity and integrity, handled huge projects yet kept a winning smile and a sense of humor even in the most stressful of project deadlines. We’ll see a model of leadership that success-bound corporate heads would do well to emulate. Maybe you didn’t know (incidentally) that he was also a Christian and creationist. But first, a review of his record.
(Excerpt) Read more at creationsafaris.com ...
Way too funny. It's also notable how you apparently choke on your own words when confronted with them.
;-/
Way too funny. It's also notable how you apparently choke on your own words when confronted with them.
;-/
Presumably we agree that: (a) Darwin didn't say that one race should go out and slaughter another; and (b) Hitler somehow came up with this on his own. Whether Hitler actually picked up erroneous bits and pieces of misinformation about Darwin's theory (or maybe something else) is irrelevant to the creationists' habit of saying that Darwin was the actual cause of Hitler's policies.
Read in context, it doesn't seem much different from standing on its own: Darwin puts it into the cool, rationalistic prose of science, but he doesn't seem bothered by the idea of one race trying to exterminate another. On the contrary, he observes it as just another fact observed in nature. Why then should Hitler hesitate to do what comes "naturally"?
Because, given the immense, deliberate, and frantic efforts Hitler put into his satanic enterprise, it clearly wasn't something that happened "naturally," as when a species goes exctinct over many generations because it fails to adapt to environmental changes. Shifting the blame for Hitler's genocide to Darwin's theory is clearly absurd.
Where's the proof my great-gran'daddy was a gol' durned question mark?
What that page might have contained:
That's what irks me about creationism. "This memory intentionally left blank."
"The more civilized so-called Caucasian races have beaten the Turkish hollow in the struggle for existence. Looking to the world at no very distant date, what an endless number of lower races will have been eliminated by the higher civilized races throughout the world."Here is the entire letter, with your selected quote shown in bold font. Things I find interesting are underlined. Also, I've added several paragraph breaks for easier reading (the original seems to have been one long paragraph). My text comes from this website: The writings of Charles Darwin on the web.
Charles Darwin in a letter to W. Graham, July 3, 1881
C. DARWIN TO W. GRAHAM.
Down, July 3rd, 1881.
Dear Sir,
I hope that you will not think it intrusive on my part to thank you heartily for the pleasure which I have derived from reading your admirably written 'Creed of Science,' though I have not yet quite finished it, as now that I am old I read very slowly. It is a very long time since any other book has interested me so much. The work must have cost you several years and much hard labour with full leisure for work.
You would not probably expect any one fully to agree with you on so many abstruse subjects; and there are some points in your book which I cannot digest. The chief one is that the existence of so-called natural laws implies purpose. I cannot see this. Not to mention that many expect that the several great laws will some day be found to follow inevitably from some one single law, yet taking the laws as we now know them, and look at the moon, where the law of gravitation-and no doubt of the conservation of energy-of the atomic theory, etc. etc., hold good, and I cannot see that there is then necessarily any purpose. Would there be purpose if the lowest organisms alone, destitute of consciousness existed in the moon? But I have had no practice in abstract reasoning, and I may be all astray.
Nevertheless you have expressed my inward conviction, though far more vividly and clearly than I could have done, that the Universe is not the result of chance.*See below But then with me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man's mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey's mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?
Secondly, I think that I could make somewhat of a case against the enormous importance which you attribute to our greatest men; I have been accustomed to think, second, third, and fourth rate men of very high importance, at least in the case of Science.
Lastly, I could show fight on natural selection having done and doing more for the progress of civilization than you seem inclined to admit. Remember what risk the nations of Europe ran, not so many centuries ago of being overwhelmed by the Turks, and how ridiculous such an idea now is! The more civilised so-called Caucasian races have beaten the Turkish hollow in the struggle for existence. Looking to the world at no very distant date, what an endless number of the lower races will have been eliminated by the higher civilized races throughout the world.
But I will write no more, and not even mention the many points in your work which have much interested me. I have indeed cause to apologise for troubling you with my impressions, and my sole excuse is the excitement in my mind which your book has aroused.
I beg leave to remain,
Dear Sir,
Yours faithfully and obliged,
CHARLES DARWIN.[Presumably, this is a footnote added by the editor, who I think was Darwin's son:]
* The Duke of Argyll ('Good Words,' Ap. 1885, page 244) has recorded a few words on this subject, spoken by my father in the last year of his life. "...in the course of that conversation I said to Mr. Darwin, with reference to some of his own remarkable works on the 'Fertilization of Orchids,' and upon 'The Earthworms,' and various other observations he made of the wonderful contrivances for certain purposes in nature-I said it was impossible to look at these without seeing that they were the effect and the expression of mind. I shall never forget Mr. Darwin's answer. He looked at me very hard and said, 'Well, that often comes over me with overwhelming force; but at other times,' and he shook his head vaguely, adding, 'it seems to go away.'"
I think Darwin was sloppy in his writing here. But in describing the Turks as "beaten hollow" he certainly isn't claiming that they have been wiped out and are now extinct. Merely that they've lost their earlier bid for supremacy over Europe. Yet they still exist. So far, Darwin isn't talking about anything remotely related to genocide.
That is the context for your second sentence. I don't know precisely what it means. When Darwin says: "... lower races will have been eliminated by the higher civilized races ..." does he mean extinction? Or does he mean, as in the Turkish example that leads up to this sentence, that Europe will be the dominant civilization (as seemed to be the case in Darwin's day, which was the height of the Brittish Empire)? The English weren't exterminating the people of India, for example. But the subject peoples of the Empire were being "eliminated" as global powers. It could be, therefore, that Darwin is merely refering to colonialism.
Anyway, the wording is vague, and opinions will vary as to what Darwin meant. It doesn't really matter. The theory of evolution certainly doesn't mandate extinction of one race by another.
It all comes down to interpretation of the supposed evidence. From my perspective I see no evolution taking place.
That was a very limited sample of what's out there in just the area of hominid evolution. By linking sites such as the one you linked in 159, you're telling people that there is no evidence from the fossil record to even consider. That's absurdly far from true. Flat-out false.
All you're really doing is refusing to make any inferences that work against you, a set which includes most of the Occam's-Razor straightforward inferences anyone would reasonably make from the data in biology, geology, and paleontology. That and you absurdly misrepresent how much evidence you're denying.
It should be remembered, in connection with this "extermination of savage races" stuff, that Darwin's generation was witnessing what we still witness today -- small tribes of indigenous people (then called "savages") seem unable to survive contact with civilized nations. This is going on today, in the Amazon rain forest, the Andaman Islands, and elsewhere. No policy of genocide is in effect. If Darwin described the facts that he observed, he was just doing his job.
For further elucidation Post #60.
This affliction was the subject of a movie a few years ago...
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