3229
3230

Can’t wait til Scott Manley talks about that :)

3231

I’m a pretty big fan of Matt O’Dowd of PBS Space Time over Scott Manley for this sort of cosmic phenomenon.

3232

I think Von Braun is generally regarded as more than “a Nazi”.

He was pretty much the father of modern rocketry (if you don’t count Goddard). Most of what he did, he did as an American, when he worked for and Redstone, and then NASA as the head of the Apollo missions and the designer of the Saturn V.

This thread probably wouldn’t exist without him.

3233

Quite. Here in Huntsville, AL the civic center is named after him.

3234

Yes, Von Braun was “more” than a Nazi and his contributions to rocketry and the U.S. space program were enormous, but it’s at least a significant moral question whether that balances out his past. He was, at the very least, aware of the labor conditions at the Mittelwerk facility, which he called “reprehensible,” but did not protest. His own chief engineer endorsed the idea of using slave labor to build the V-2, and more people died building it than were killed by it as a weapon.

3235

I think that Von Braun is, like many folks in history, a complex person and not a singular “good” or “bad”.

But the thing that’s important to keep in mind, when dealing with our current context, is that when people name things like spacecraft and crap after him, they are doing so in honor of his contributions to science and spaceflight, and not in honor of his membership in the nazi party in the 40’s.

3236

If he’s not singularly “good” or “bad”, then why are we singularly naming stuff in honor of him? Maybe the name of the ship should be more “balanced” to reflect both his good and bad sides.

3237

Because his contributions in the field of space flight are worthy of honor.

3238

I know, but it’s more fair if we reflect on the whole person, not just a part of the person. And if you don’t feel comfortable doing that then maybe you shouldn’t be honoring him in the first place, period.

3239

I mean this isn’t the first thing named after him.

And it wouldn’t be the first to have his name removed either.

However I suspect things like the Von Braun crater will remain as such for the indefinite future.

3240

My cynical side finds that particularly appropriate.

3241
3242

No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man’s and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water.

3243

Are you suggesting we name the ship the SS Von Braun?

3244

Applause

3245

Or maybe a youth football camp named after Jerry Sandusky?

3246

Bill Cosby also received an Kennedy Center Honors award at one point, so I guess Timex is right.

3247

Yeah, being a comedian is basically the same as putting human beings on the moon. Same level of contribution to humanity.

3248

If the US and NAZI Germany didn’t happen to both hate the Russians, no one would have given him a dime to build any rockets. He’d just have been some dude making sketches in a notebook.

Anyway, did von Braun win Kennedy Center Honors? Nope.