German president wants 'Luftwaffe' off official aircraft (WHITEWASH ALERT)

Ivan, get real. It'll take longer than that. This is the country which produced the world's leading rocket scientists and has no manned space program

Also the country which had a nuclear bomb programme but forbade its scientists to read Einstein (Jewish, you see).

Regards, Ivan

Robert Goddard, an American, is known as "Father of modern rocketry."

"When a captured German scientist was asked about the origin of the V-2, he was said to have responded, "Why don't you ask your own Dr. Goddard? He knows better than any of us." When some V-2s finally made their way to the U.S. and Goddard had a chance to autopsy one, he instantly recognized his own handiwork. "Isn't this your rocket?" an assistant asked as they poked around its innards. "It seems to be," Goddard replied flatly."

http://www.time.com/time/time100/scientist/profile/goddard03.html

I'm sure she would have.

There was an article in the US Naval Institute Proceedings several years ago. The topic was just what role nuclear weapons served in the information age.

The article included one of the funniest lines I've ever read in the Proceedings--and they DO publish a fair amount of humor, BTW. It was funny because it was so understated.

"Few people in Europe near or over the age of 50 can see tanks with Maltese Crosses on them without getting a little nervous."

Also the country which had a nuclear bomb programme but forbade its scientists to read Einstein (Jewish, you see).

You should read the Farm Hall transcripts.

There's a very neat summary in the August 1995 edition of Physics Today. Heisenberg was well aware of Einstein. BTW, Einstein played virtually no role in nuclear weapons development, aside from publishing his theory of Special Relativity (E = mc²) in 1905 and signing a ghost-written letter to President Roosevelt in 1940.

The Germans did have a working reactor in Berlin in 1945, but no real nuclear weapons program to speak of. They just did not have the industrial base to fight a two front war and develop nuclear weapons. The U.S. spent about 2% of its war time expenditures on the Manhattan District Engineering Project. This would have been a massive undertaking for the Germans, considering the disportionate size of the two economies and the greater militarization of the economy in the U.S. (The U.S. actually devoted a greater share of the GNP to war production than the Germans, because we were less complacent.) By the time the Germans realized they might need a nuclear bomb, it was too late. Hilter expected Russia to eliminated by end of 1942, at the latest and with Russia gone, Britian could be dealt with quickly by die Luftwaffe und die Wehrmacht.

The Physics Today article shows that Heisenberg understood how a nuclear reactor could work and how to create a fission bomb. The Germans did not lack the technical skill to make a bomb. And they could have expected complete cooperation from the French, who were willing armorers of the Germans, post 1940.

Perhaps it would be more appropriate to call Goddard the Grandfather of rocketry? His contributions were ground breaking and he excelled his peers in Europe at the time from 1920's to 1940's (according to many). He died in 1945. von Braun arrived in Huntsville, AL in 1950.

The US Missile programs did not truly "skyrocket" until the 1950's with the massive, large scale development of everything from new anti-tank missiles to intercontinental ballistic missiles to space launch missiles. I won't argue that Goddard be credited as the father of rocketry, but von Braun can be similarly credited as the father of the next generation of missiles and rockets.

From Marshall Spce Flight Center
Wernher Von Braun was one of the world's first and foremost rocket engineers and a leading authority on space travel. His will to expand man's knowledge through the exploration of space led to the development of the Explorer satellites, the Jupiter and Jupiter-C rockets, Pershing, the Redstone rocket, Saturn rockets, and Skylab, the world's first space station. Additionally, his determination to "go where no man has gone before" led to mankind setting foot on the moon.
Living in Huntsville, Alabama from 1950 to 1970, Dr. von Braun first directed the technical development of the U.S. Army's ballistic missile program at Redstone Arsenal, and later served as Director of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center. When he transferred to Washington, D.C., he left Huntsville with a rich legacy: the research institutions at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, the Alabama Space and Rocket Center, and the Von Braun Civic Center.

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