Tearing von Braun and NASA a new a-hole.

A "mildly critical" article about von Braun's Collier's articles:
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/rocketscience-03zzf.html
Obviously, I wasn't the only one who saw the new Encyclopedia
Astronautica article.
This seems awfully hyperbolic though; the Wade article really impressed
me with just how close to reality von Braun got the performance that
would be achieved with future rocket engines in his designs.
We seem to be back in WvB hunting season again... on that thought,
here's a bit of none-too-politically correct speculation:
No V-2. No von Braun. No Blitz 2 of London. No Mittelwerk-made V-2s. No
Collier's articles.
Soviet Union and United States don't have anything to inspire them to
build large rockets, or a really big rocket to play with at war's end.
First satellite goes up when? 1970?
First weather satellite when? 1975?
How many people died both at the receiving end of V-2's; and in their
manufacture by slave labor- 10,000? (remembering that the slave labor at
Mittelwerk would have been sent somewhere else without V-2's...maybe
even stayed in the same place making more V-1s)
How many people's lives were saved worldwide between Tiros 1 in 1960-
and the follow-on Nimbus, ITOS, ESSA, ATS, SMS, and Soviet Meteors- and
the year 1975- by satellite observation of weather, and in particular
in regard to hurricanes, cyclones and monsoons?
Over 10,000?
Did von Braun save more lives than his rocket cost?

Pat

On 3 Nov 2003 15:37:40 -0000, Grinlin Gibbons
wrote:

Number manufactured: 6,240

....Number of confirmed trolls your mother produced during her career
as a cheap street who 1

PLONK

OM

--

"No ******* ever won a war by dying for | http://www.io.com/~o_m
his country. He won it by making the other | Sergeant-At-Arms
poor dumb ******* die for his country." | Human O-Ring Society

- General George S. Patton, Jr

In article ,
Grinlin Gibbons wrote:
A Challenger disaster with every
launch. Think about it.

Now look at the parking lot of, say, a baseball stadium during a big game.
Think about traffic fatalities.
--
MOST launched 30 June; first light, 29 July; 5arcsec | Henry Spencer
pointing, 10 Sept; first science, early Oct; all well. |

Pat Flannery wrote:
A "mildly critical" article about von Braun's Collier's articles:
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/rocketscience-03zzf.html
Obviously, I wasn't the only one who saw the new Encyclopedia
Astronautica article.

Spacedaily once again manages to confuse to fantasy with reality.

D.
--
The STS-107 Columbia Loss FAQ can be found
at the following URLs:

Text-Only Version:
http://www.io.com/~o_m/columbia_loss_faq.html

Enhanced HTML Version:
http://www.io.com/~o_m/columbia_loss_faq_x.html

Corrections, comments, and additions should be
e-mailed to , as well as posted to
sci.space.history and sci.space.shuttle for
discussion.

In article ,
Nomen Nescio wrote:
Now look at the parking lot of, say, a baseball stadium during a big game.
Think about traffic fatalities.

Oh, were those traffic fatalities caused by starvation, torture...

Dead is dead. They are just as much a cost of the automobile as the
deaths you mention were costs of the V-2. And there are a whole lot
more of them.
--
MOST launched 30 June; first light, 29 July; 5arcsec | Henry Spencer
pointing, 10 Sept; first science, early Oct; all well. |

On Mon, 3 Nov 2003 18:10:00 GMT, (Henry Spencer)
wrote:

Now look at the parking lot of, say, a baseball stadium during a big game.
Think about traffic fatalities.

....Traffic fatalities? How about gang fights and angry fan
confrontations?

OM

--

"No ******* ever won a war by dying for | http://www.io.com/~o_m
his country. He won it by making the other | Sergeant-At-Arms
poor dumb ******* die for his country." | Human O-Ring Society

- General George S. Patton, Jr

Grinlin Gibbons wrote:

Number manufactured: 6,240

Number launched: 3,590
Successes: 2,890 (81)
Failures: 700 (19)
In inventory: 2,100
Work in progress: 250
Expended in development: 300

Development program cost: US$ 2 billion
Development cost per launcher: US$ 350,512
Total manufacturing cost per launcher: US$ 43,750
Marginal cost, launchers 5000+: US$ 13,000 (Yes, 13K!)

These are actual figures for the first
mass-produced rocket vehicle, the V2
(A4)--fifty years ago. Prices are in
US wartime dollars.


Total deaths related to V2

26,500 - Dora/Mittlewerk
2,754 - Britain
6,448 - Belgium

35,702 killed by V2 production and use. 6240 produced.

The REAL cost of a V2 - 5.72-deaths per
V2 (at least).

So when you view a video of a V2
launch, each one cost almost 6-lives.

A Challenger disaster with every
launch. Think about it.




From an old posting of mine to sci.space.history:

"They managed to spend a fortune of the Nazi's money (around 2 & 1/2
billion dollars in U.S. wartime dollars; including 2
billion for the A-4 and it's predecessors development alone between
1931-45) on a weapon that, in use, killed a average of around 1 & 3/4's
person per missile.. from an old post of mine:

Out of curiosity, I looked up the facts and figures on casualties caused by
V-2's (or A-4's, for the purists) during W.W.II:
A total of approximately 3,170 V-2s were launched operationally at targets;
the vast majority at London, England and Antwerp, Belgium.
The V-2 attacks on England killed a total of 2,511 people.
The attacks on Belgium by both V-1's and V-2's killed a total of 6,448
people- assuming a breakdown of the type of weapons used to be the same as
the attacks on England, then around 44% of the deaths would be attributable
to V-2's; or around 2840 total.
If we include another, say, 200 deaths for other targets that came under V-2
attack, we come up with a total of around 5,550 total fatalities or a average
of 1 and 3/4 killed per missile.
....if von Braun was a murdering terrorist, he was a rank amateur by most standards.
(Figures are from V-Missiles of the Third Reich, by Dieter
Holsken, Monogram Aviation Publications,1994, ISBN 0-914144-42-1)

Your argument assumes that all the dead of Dora and Mittelwerk would
have survived the war if there were no V-2; the slave labor force was
also building V-1's, Junkers-Jumo piston aircraft engines, and HE-162
Volksjagers at Mittelwerk, and if the workers hadn't been building V-2s,
would they have been working on these other projects? In fact, the very
fact that they were seen as capable of doing work of some sort for the
Nazis probably saved them an immediate trip to the gas chamber, as
happened to everyone who was deemed unfit to do work on arrival at the
camps (many women- as well as young children, the elderly, the sick, and
the infirm) The only deaths that can definitely be credited to the V-2
are the ones inflicted on the receiving end of its trajectory (as well
as some upon the troops who operated it, and civilians that
malfunctioning ones fell on near the launch site). As a weapon the V-2
sucked. Even using your figures, we come to a figure of total dead of
9,202 for Britain and Belgium, plus whatever the malfunctions amounted
to (say 500) so taking 9,702 and dividing it by your total production
and launch figures we arrive at 1.6 deaths per V-2 produced; or 2.7
deaths per V-2 actually used- for a terror weapon it seems about as
efficient as a well-placed hand grenade. The tremendous amount of money
that was spent on them would probably have generated far more deaths if
it had been spent on other military weapons, or merely on thousands and
thousands more V-1s; which was a far more effective weapon from the cost
point of view- from http://www.strandlab.com/buzzbombs/
"Afterwards, the Allies acknowledged that the V-1 was a tactical
success. It was also a very cost-effective weapon:

From a strictly dollar point of view, the V-1 cost the Germans less
to build and to operate than it cost the Allies in damage and
defense. A wartime British study [concluded that] using the German
costs as unity . . . it cost the defenders 1.46 for damage and loss
of production, 1.88 for the bombing, .30 for fighter interception,
and .16 for static defenses, for a total ratio of 3.80:1 [in favor
of the Germans.]"

Mittelwerk production costs per V-1 were around 6,000 marks per
unit...so that 2 billion marks used on the V-2's would have built
around another 333,333 of them; even taking 1/2 that money and using
it for more launch sites as well as destruction of V-1's in
airstrikes before they were launched and you could have around
166,000 more V-1s heading toward Britain and Belguim- using the
total number of ground and air-launched V-1s used against Britain as
a guide- 10,492; and the total that reached Britain itself after
malfunctions, interceptions, and anti-aircraft fire- 5,822- we come
up with an overall success rate of around 45% of the flying bombs
launched successfully reaching enemy territory.
These resulted in a total of 6,184 killed in England, and a further
17,981 severely wounded; extrapolating from these figures we find a
average fatality rate of around .58 per V-1 launched, and a wounding
rate of 1.7 per same.
Taking this in combination with our earlier estimate of 166,000
extra V-1 launches by the nonexistence of the V-2 program, and we
end up with a total of around 96,280 more dead, and 282,200 severely
wounded by V-1 attack bringing our total V-weapon casualties to
around 100,000 killed and around 300,000 severely injured.
This contrasts sharply with the effects of the actual V-1/V-2
attacks which caused a total of 15,324 killed and 37,189 severely
injured between Britain and Belgium. If the money that went into V-2
design and construction was spent on V-1s instead, then there could
have been around 84,000 fewer people alive at the end of W.W. II.

Pat

Grinlin Gibbons wrote:
&
edo wrote:
&
Nomen Nescio wrote:

Number manufactured: 6,240


Okay...what the **** is going on here? I'll gladly debate my conclusions
with anybody...but having three different addresses is pushing it a
bit... and really doesn't impress me with your qualifications.

Pat

Nomen Nescio wrote:

Oh, were those traffic fatalities caused by starvation, torture, hanging
by piano wire, zyklon gas, being shot
in front of their families, beatings,
freezing to death, medical experiments,
fatal illness caused by deprivation, babies skulls crushed by rifle butts, injections of carbonic acid, being burried alive or the auto being used as a weapon of terror? Sorry, my mistake. Nevermind.



No...that would be at a soccer game.

Pat

"OM" om@our_blessed_lady_mary_of_the_holy_NASA_researc h_facility.org wrote
in message ...
On Mon, 3 Nov 2003 18:10:00 GMT, (Henry Spencer)
wrote:

Now look at the parking lot of, say, a baseball stadium during a big
game.
Think about traffic fatalities.

...Traffic fatalities? How about gang fights and angry fan
confrontations?

He said baseball, not English "football".



OM

--

"No ******* ever won a war by dying for | http://www.io.com/~o_m
his country. He won it by making the other | Sergeant-At-Arms
poor dumb ******* die for his country." | Human O-Ring Society

- General George S. Patton, Jr