Blast off!

 At the end of my last post I made a brief reference to the American space rice. A race with whom? With the united Soviet socialist republic. Also known as Russia. But let us begin with this:

No if any of you haven’t already seen the movie “Apollo 13 “, I’m just going to curl up and die. After seeing this you want to watch that movie.

You have to begin with nazis. These are the first truly big brains to lend themselves toward our emergent space race in the late 40s and early 50s. However it would take the rest of the decade for Eisenhower to create NASA.

And if we’re beginning with the Nazis then we have to begin with one in particular, his name was Werner von Braun.  No old Werner was perhaps Germany’s top rocket scientist. He had gathered a bunch of like minded men to work with him at a site known as Peenemunde.  There of course he had not only an army of scientist, but it equally vest hoard of concentration camp prisoners to fulfill his every wish and desire.

Well they were at this site Verner and his band of not so married assholes decided to conduct experiments Dash not just experiments having to do with oxygen at high altitudes but what happened to human body in a flight suit suspended in ice cold water for three days. Let me tell you the results are not pretty.

And obviously, the poor bastards being used for this process of ridiculous experimentation, we’re the concentration camp victims. Who were these victims? They were members of the Jewish race, Catholics, Jehovah’s Witnesses, gypsies gays,  the physically handicapped—anyone of whom the Nazis did not approve or admire.  And thousands of them were used at Peenemünde. Stillmore were used as slave labor to build the V1 and then V2 German rocket that bombarded London in the last months of WWII.

Many of the Peenemunde scientists ended up working with the Americans,, developing the early stages of our space program, furthering our nuclear endeavors, and perfecting our jets.

Under the direction of Werner von Braun, the scientists in America began working seriously on the development of rockets.  I believe it was called the Redstone project. Most of these early rockets were utter and disastrous and expensive failures. But the Americans had the bed between their teeth and they were frightened. Ridiculously, somewhere frightened of such a thing as a Russian moon. I know it sounds ridiculous but you have to understand the mindset of these people for them, the world was divided, between the good guys—America & Co, vs.the big bad Russian bear.

And yet how did we go from Rockets blowing up on the launchpad to the glorious scene shown above featuring Tom Hanks as the captain of what became known as Apollo 13? That is a long story filled with emptied bank vaults, and failed political careers .

And this was the conclusion of what I have come

To think of as nasas finest hour. 

So how did it all start? Well, there was once this rocket scientist, who lived in a land far far away, known as nazi germany….

Yes, really.  His name was Werner Von Braun, and he was more than probably a major in the SS bastardos.  And yet, without his team of Peenemunde buddies, and the rocket science (V1 V2) they afforded the US, we would have taken oh so much longer to achieve anything.  That is what operation paperclip was trying (and succeeded) to accomplish.  I mean, who cares if you employ Nazis, and get them on the cover of Time Magazine? It's the science that matters, not the politics!  Jesus.  If it were me, I would have rounded EVERY ONE of those Nazi bastards up, and sent them back to Nurnberg for trial, and whatever else came next.

No, really.  Time Magazine.

I mean, can you believe this asshole?  On the bloody cover of Popular Science?

And, lest we forget, LIFE magazine?  Ye Gods.

And some still call him the father of the Space Race.  NOT EVEN! 

Did everyone suddenly forget that we needed advanced science and telecommunications to get to the moon? Ever heard of Alan Turing?  Computers?  Aluminium?  What were needed were new technologies, new materials, and new minds, if we were ever going to make it into space.

And, while I am at it, can we say a quick thank you and Amen to Katherine Johnson--one of the best minds to work at NASA, she was a mathematical genius of the first water.  And we don't see her on the cover of TIME, do we?  Oh, that's right--she wasn't an older white male (or Honkey, as we used to call them in the 70s).  While I am at this, let me recommend to you a film you may have missed:  "Hidden Figures."  It's about the African American women who worked at NASA in the early years of the space program.  

It was due to people like Katherine Johnson, and hot shot pilots like Gordon "Gordo" Cooper, that the American space program succeeded beyond anyone's expectation.  

Back to Werner (and no, I don't want to spell his name with the "h").  

When he came to this country, he began immediately working with the U.S. Army, in their emergent rocket program.  Somebody had this bright idea of orbiting platforms with rockets on them.  OHHKAY.

But, hey, it was the fifties?  It was the era of "Creature of the Black Lagoon."

And, of course, "The Day the Earth Stood Still."  He's definitely rocking that silver suit folks!

But the Army's Redstone project was ultimately not very successful.  

Check this out:

I know.  Hilarious, right?  But, sad also, because we were spending millions per rocket.  Oh well, anything for science.  No.  Really.  I am a science girl, even if I cannot add two and two.

Yet, in spite of these many failures, we continued to fall short of the ultimate goal:  to get a man into space.  We also had another problem--beating the Russians.  Who would get into space first? 

Well, actually it was the Russians.  They got the first man into space.  They put the first poor animal into space, to eternally wander around the earth in orbit.  The first live thing in space? A dog named Mica.  How? It came down to heavy lifting and thrusting capabilities.  The Russians' rocket scientists were better than ours.  Poor friggin' Werner.

And so, the pressure was on throughout the fifties, lest (gasp!) we live under the shadow of a "red moon."  Again, gasp!  But, this was the mindset of people in those decades, at the height of the Cold War--the world was divided into Reds and Not Reds.Communism vs. Democracy.  Good vs. Evil.  I know, I know.  It sounds silly, right? And, yet, every age is the same--we always have to have something to fight;  something to rail against, whatever side you're on.

So, this mentality is what started the so-called "Space Race."  And, boy howdy, was it lucrative for the private contractors in this country.  I mean, just think of the increased defense spending! Whoa, to quote Keanu.

But, who, or what would provide the motivation? Surely, this had to come from a deeper place or psyche than 'us vs. them.' And, so 'hey presto!' someone provided it.  Would you believe Eisenhower?  Truly.  Old Ike was the one who aided in the formation of NASA, and made infamous reference to it in his farewell address.  This was to be an organization of exploration, and not a branch of the Dept. of Defense.  Thank the gods.  Now, the Space question had a philosophical underpinning, right out of the Manifest Destiny playbook, and boy was it popular...

Dare I, yet again, show you this?

Dare! Dare!

By 1965, the country had gone space nuts.  Jesus, it was even found in fashion:

And, Jane Fonda as Barbarella, ladies and gentlemen!

Everyone was in love with space.  It was an idea that we could all get behind, as it was not polarized by any particular political philosophy.  We could all get behind images of a man walking in space, or later, by Neil Armstrong's pivotal first steps on the moon.  The earth was just a planet, and we all lived on it.  

OK.  Now, those were the cultural implications.  What were the socio-political ramifications? Well, that has to do with John Fitzgerald Kennedy, whose speech at Rice University provided official backing for the leap from the Earth to the Moon.  

But, this was at odds with the real social dilemma taking place in sixties America--changes that had to do with racial injustice, poverty, and civil rights.  These movements would transform the face of our country, and ultimately had little to do with the space race.  Or did they? It is the basic curiosity shared by everyone of this little blue world, about the unknown;  about the void beyond.  Space, although it was going to cost one hell of a lot of money, was the one thing that everyone could embrace.  After all, this was not just the achievement of white mankind, but of all humankind.  Look, space is the one thing I don't mind spending my tax dollars on!

Alright.  We have the political backing, the Nazi scientists, and the will of the people.  What else dp we need? Ah yes.  The idiots who would tie themselves to a high explosive which would eject them into space.  Seriously, who would want to do this? A bunch of valiant guys, that's who.  Men who would become legends.  And, in my less than humble opinion, they bloody well deserved it.  These are men, who in the words of Wolfe the author, had the "right stuff."

This brings us to the Mercury 7 astronauts, of which Alan Shephard, John Glen, and Gordon Cooper were just three.  These were the men, who would be our first into space.  So, who were these guys? Well, they were NOT Chuck Yeagar, the pilot who broke the sound barrier.  But, they were often test pilots, who all chased the outside of that proverbial envelope, wanting to be at the top of the pyramid.  And, more power to them.  They were white men, with a considerable education. And, yes, they were also men who had quite a high opinion of themselves, as was seen in their copious affairs with members of the opposite sex, especially after they were named to the Mercury project.

Where oh where were the persons of color? Where oh where were the women?  Ugh.  That's right, that's right.  We're discussing the sixties, where segregation still ruled the land, and women had yet to truly discover Betty Friedan's 'feminine mystique.'

OK. So we have the Mercury astronauts. And they would be followed by other aviators. The question is then what do we do with them?

That my friends is what I’ll cover in the next installment.