What if Wernher Von Braun Given First Try To Launch First Satellite?

On Mon, 30 Apr 2012 20:55:21 -0700 (PDT), heich1
wrote:

Suppose if the task was not given to the U.S. navy to launch the first
satellite with the Vanguard program but to
Wernher Von Braun with his Explorer program? The result is pretty
obvious. The U.S. would have beat the Russians. Explorer would have
gone up before Sputnik. A more interesting question is why the U.S.
chose the Vanguard program?

Vanguard was derived from a scientific system (the Viking sounding
rocket) while Explorer/Redstone were military systems. The "satellite
race" was actually part of the International Geophysical Year
(1957-58) and was considered a scientific, not military endeavour. So
Vanguard got the nod. The impact of Sputnik was completely, totally
unexpected by the Eisenhower Administration.

After all the Army Redstone program was more ahead.
In fact Vanguard failed several times

Only once before the job was given to von Braun. And that one failure
was the first all-up flight of Vanguard, the previous "Vanguard"
flights had dummy or inert upper stages. That flight, Vanguard TV3
(Test Vehicle 3) was never meant to be an orbital launch attempt. A
satellite was hastily added to it in the wake of Sputnik 1. A second
Vanguard (TV3BU "backup" on February 5, 1958) also failed, but that
was a week after Explorer 1 (January 31, 1958). The third Vanguard
orbital attempt (March 17, 1958) successfully placed America's second
satellite in orbit, where it remains... the oldest artificial
satellite in Earth orbit.

while Explorer was sucessful in its first try.

But failed on its second (March 5, 1958). Sometimes, that's the way
the ball bounces.

I have the theory that
they did not want to give Von Braun the credit because of his V2
program which attacked London and also the mistreatment of the slave
workers who worked on Nazi Germany's rocket program.

No. The Cold War was in high gear at the time, and the space program
was considered a distraction. The Pentagon didn't want the space
(Vanguard) program taking away resources from its ICBM efforts.

What is your opinion of this?

Far-fetched. It wasn't as much an issue at the time as it is taken to
be now. We were a far, far, less politically correct society in 1957.

Is there any evidence of this in documents from that time?

Nope, and tons to the contrary.

http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/Hi...4202/cover.htm

http://www.amazon.com/The-First-Spac...5931567&sr=1-1


Brian

On Tue, 01 May 2012 20:43:42 GMT, (Derek Lyons)
wrote:

Not widely known or understood today is just how fast the "Nazis and
Nips" were publicly rehabilitated from the bloodthirsty and implacable
Enemies Of Democracy they were portrayed as in WWII into Stalwart
Allies Against Communism.

Not sure - I routinely saw Sergeant Rock comic books with Japanese
villains into my later teen years and I was born in 1955.

Certainly WWF/WWE was casting Russian, Japanese and German villains in
the late 1980s and beyond. What wrestling fan can forget the ineffable
Mr. Fuji?

"The Horny Goat" wrote in message
...

On Tue, 01 May 2012 20:43:42 GMT, (Derek Lyons)
wrote:

Not widely known or understood today is just how fast the "Nazis and
Nips" were publicly rehabilitated from the bloodthirsty and implacable
Enemies Of Democracy they were portrayed as in WWII into Stalwart
Allies Against Communism.

Not sure - I routinely saw Sergeant Rock comic books with Japanese
villains into my later teen years and I was born in 1955.

I hate to break it to you, Sergeant Rock was fictional. WvB was not.

Derek was talking about real live people like Wernher Van Braun. (which
btw, I still think everyone should listen to Tom Lehrer's song Wernher Von
Baun song at least once).

Yes, Nazis, Commies and the like make convenient foils in fictional accounts
(seems to me Indiana Jones had fun with all of them) but that wasn't the
political reality in the 1940s and 1950s.

Keep in mind, that VERY quickly after defeating the Germans, our eyes in
Europe turned immediately towards the Soviet Union (including some who
suggested we repeat the mistakes of the Germans and try to take on the
Russians on their home turf.)



Certainly WWF/WWE was casting Russian, Japanese and German villains in
the late 1980s and beyond. What wrestling fan can forget the ineffable
Mr. Fuji?



--
Greg D. Moore http://greenmountainsoftware.wordpress.com/
CEO QuiCR: Quick, Crowdsourced Responses. http://www.quicr.net

On Wed, 2 May 2012 09:42:07 -0400, "Greg \(Strider\) Moore"
wrote:

"The Horny Goat" wrote in message
.. .

On Tue, 01 May 2012 20:43:42 GMT, (Derek Lyons)
wrote:

Not widely known or understood today is just how fast the "Nazis and
Nips" were publicly rehabilitated from the bloodthirsty and implacable
Enemies Of Democracy they were portrayed as in WWII into Stalwart
Allies Against Communism.

Not sure - I routinely saw Sergeant Rock comic books with Japanese
villains into my later teen years and I was born in 1955.

I hate to break it to you, Sergeant Rock was fictional. WvB was not.

I'm well aware of what was fiction and what was not. And as someone
who watched 2001 when it was first new and prayed it _would_ be our
future I am of course more than aware of von Braun.

As someone from vancouver.bc.ca (which is about as far from Florida as
you can get on the same continent) my kids thought their 1998 vacation
was about Disneyworld whereas Dad knew it was really about those two
days at Cape Canaveral (where among other things I got to sit in the
CapComm's seat for John Glenn's flight)

Derek was talking about real live people like Wernher Van Braun. (which
btw, I still think everyone should listen to Tom Lehrer's song Wernher Von
Baun song at least once).

I share your view of Lehrer and that was one of my favorites - I had
it in mp3 but lost it in a drive crash two years ago where I lost
something like 120gb of mp3s.

Yes, Nazis, Commies and the like make convenient foils in fictional accounts
(seems to me Indiana Jones had fun with all of them) but that wasn't the
political reality in the 1940s and 1950s.

Keep in mind, that VERY quickly after defeating the Germans, our eyes in
Europe turned immediately towards the Soviet Union (including some who
suggested we repeat the mistakes of the Germans and try to take on the
Russians on their home turf.)

Yup - anyone reading accounts of 1946-48 can be in no doubt who the
main threat was considered to be. It's probably the main reason most
of us have heard of Fulton, Missouri. (For those who don't know that's
where Churchill made his Iron Curtain speech)

The Horny Goat wrote:

On Wed, 2 May 2012 09:59:39 -0400, (Padraigh
ProAmerica) wrote:

Sgt. Rock was ETO based; there were other war comics that did conter on
the Pacific war.

Point taken - I was a Batman fan not really a fan of the military
comics but it's hard to forget the demonic Japanese from the comic
books. It's possible the comic books were more a reflection of Vietnam

Nope it's that WWII mythology ran strong in the US. (Sgt Rock and
other war comics predate US involvement in Vietnam.) Even as late as
the 70's, we were fighting Nazi's with toy guns out in the woods. I
was (born 1963) in my late twenties/early thirties before I started to
really see the dichotomy between the mythical Germans I fought out in
the piney woods and the real world Germans touted as the lynchpin of
NATO and staunch allies against the Red Hordes.

Heck, that dichotomy still stands today to some extent... the MMORPG
City Of Heroes launched with what was an all-but-the-swastika's Nazi
supersoldier villain group. (The game's official mythology calls them
"Fascists", but the group's iconography makes it very clear what they
actually are. See: http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/5th_Column.) When
they were removed from the game soon after launch, there was great hue
and cry over the belief the dev team had bowed to political
correctness... They returned to the game recently to the great joy of
the players. (A common feeling among players is that "nothing says
superhero like kicking some Nazi butt".)

Which is what lead to my original comment about people not really
understanding how fast the "Germans" were rehabilited (enough such
that WVB was acceptable to Joe Sixpack the US of the early 50's),
while the "Nazis" remain reviled even today. Today we take as a
matter of course that "Nazis" are seperate from "Germans". Sixty
seven years ago today, just a little under a week before VE day, such
a thing would have been all but unthinkable to those who'd fought the
Germans not once, but *twice* in living memory.

D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

http://derekl1963.livejournal.com/

-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL

"
Not sure - I routinely saw Sergeant Rock comic books with Japanese
villains into my later teen years and I was born in 1955.

I also read many of the world war II war comics and many of the paperbacks
about specific battles or equipment. But I think that was more a kid
fantacizing about the glories of victory. Purple tiger tanks and a skilled
US paratrooper who could take one out with one well placed grenade etc. I
also had war toys - a big deal in the 5 & 10s. Many relatives and neighbors
fought in the war and had their souvineers and stories. But I only remember
one story about the german missiles - really great cover the GIs are
attacking a base as a rocket is launching in the background - words over
picture - It was On It's Way to Destroy a City.

The Horny Goat wrote:

On Tue, 01 May 2012 20:43:42 GMT, (Derek Lyons)
wrote:

Not widely known or understood today is just how fast the "Nazis and
Nips" were publicly rehabilitated from the bloodthirsty and implacable
Enemies Of Democracy they were portrayed as in WWII into Stalwart
Allies Against Communism.

Not sure - I routinely saw Sergeant Rock comic books with Japanese
villains into my later teen years and I was born in 1955.

Sgt Rock comics (more precisely, "GI Combat" comics until 1977)
were set during WW II when the US was at war with Germany and Japan.

After the defeat of Japan and Germany, Japanese and Germans
were no longer presumed to be _current_ enemies.
--
| Nous sommes dans un pot de chambre, et nous y serons emmerdes. |
| -- General Auguste-Alexandre Ducrot at Sedan, 1870. |

(Derek Lyons) wrote:

Today we take as a
matter of course that "Nazis" are seperate from "Germans". Sixty
seven years ago today, just a little under a week before VE day, such
a thing would have been all but unthinkable ...

Not at all. In _Up Frant_, Bill Mauldin specifically
denounced such thinking - so there must have been a
fair amount of it.
--
| Nous sommes dans un pot de chambre, et nous y serons emmerdes. |
| -- General Auguste-Alexandre Ducrot at Sedan, 1870. |

In Brian Thorn writes:

On Mon, 30 Apr 2012 20:55:21 -0700 (PDT), heich1
wrote:

After all the Army Redstone program was more ahead.
In fact Vanguard failed several times

Only once before the job was given to von Braun. And that one failure
was the first all-up flight of Vanguard, the previous "Vanguard"
flights had dummy or inert upper stages. That flight, Vanguard TV3
(Test Vehicle 3) was never meant to be an orbital launch attempt. A
satellite was hastily added to it in the wake of Sputnik 1. A second
Vanguard (TV3BU "backup" on February 5, 1958) also failed, but that
was a week after Explorer 1 (January 31, 1958). The third Vanguard
orbital attempt (March 17, 1958) successfully placed America's second
satellite in orbit, where it remains... the oldest artificial
satellite in Earth orbit.

while Explorer was sucessful in its first try.

But failed on its second (March 5, 1958). Sometimes, that's the way
the ball bounces.

Suggesting a what-if that I don't recall seeing worked out on
sci.space.history or soc.history.what-if. Suppose we have were to
swap the Explorer 2 and Explorer 1 boosters --- well, there, given a
presumably identical launch schedule Explorer 1 failing in January,
Vanguard 2 failing in February, and Explorer 2 succeeding in March
would probably produce a space race pretty near identical to what did
happen in our timeline.

But stir it just a little farther: give the February Vanguard
launch the successful booster from the third. Then you'd have this
setup: the infamous Vanguard 'flopnik', then the Army gets its big
go-ahead chance, and then Explorer 1 and Our Germans *fail*, only to
have Vanguard come through two weeks later with a success after all.

What would the implications on the early space race and the
setup of NASA be, other than that Vanguard doesn't get the rotten
reputation that still clings to it? What happens to a Von Braun who
isn't the savior of America's Space Reputation?

--
http://nebusresearch.wordpress.com/ Joseph Nebus
Current Entry: Why Do We Like Polynomials? http://wp.me/p1RYhY-df
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

" Which is what lead to my original comment about people not really
understanding how fast the "Germans" were rehabilited (enough such
that WVB was acceptable to Joe Sixpack the US of the early 50's),
while the "Nazis" remain reviled even today. Today we take as a
matter of course that "Nazis" are seperate from "Germans". Sixty
seven years ago today, just a little under a week before VE day, such
a thing would have been all but unthinkable to those who'd fought the
Germans not once, but *twice* in living memory.


Maybe not exactly. I have to word this carefully. Some time ago I read an
article about the end of the war and how we demonized Hitler as a person who
seized control and not the representative of all his people. Even look at
the British propaganda - Hitler and his henchmen were targeted directly.
Songs like Hitler - he only has one ball, and spike Jones in the Fuehrer's
face. So the thinking is, Hitler is the devil or anti Christ. When he was
dead - the sins committed went with him, his people were freed. The analogy
is an anti messiah who when he died the sins of common mankind went with
him. OK a bit deep. The other thing you have to remember that while Hitler
and Mussoli were taking on western civilization, there were many "German
heritage " farm boys from Iowa and Italians from Brooklyn, dropping bombs on
the reich and marching up the "soft" underbelly of Europe and wading ashore
at D-day, some of them my relatives, fighting to end the mess. So it makes
it hard to condem a people - especially if you have to live whith them after
the war. We grabbed the major bad guys and tried them at Nuremberg - so it
wasn't like the real leaders escaped punishment. The rituals were done and
normal relationships required for western civilazation were re-established.
War is truly complicated - unfortunately the analysis "On War" by von
Clauswitz was never finished.