Sputnik sparked the dawn of the Space Age. That is, unless you consider the
hushed-up Roswell Incident in 1947; the alleged Mogul weather balloon. But
Roswell did capture the interest of the Air Force, and in 1957 they funded
Convair to develop a radio telescope to search the heavens for radio signals. As
I noted earlier today, Convair assigned Thomas M. Hemphill to head the design
team and then Convair build the first United States radio telescope at Clark
Dry Lake in 1959. Both Sputnik and the radio antennae are processual steps in
the Early Space Age that continues to this day. All of this spun off the
Cold War, which effectively began in 1945, and the paranoia of the implications
of a Soviet satellite drove Congress to fund billions of dollars into NASA
that continues through the present.
Now, here is the irony that should not be lost on the youth who did not live
in those days. The scientists in the Soviet Union and United States who
worked on the emerging Space Age did so with German military technology,
including some SS and Nazi Party scientists. Here in America our government captured
SS officer and former Nazi Party member Werner Von Braun and brought him to
the US through 'Cointelpro," exonerated him of his crimes against humanity,
and made him a citizen in order to develop rocketry. Other examples are
endless, but the first rocket fired in the Dawn of the Space Age in America was none
other than a German V-2 rocket and, also interesting, it was fired at a
range south of Roswell, New Mexico at about the same time as the so-called
Roswell Incident in 1947. The Soviets also turned former German scientists into
valued citizens and it was they who enabled the launch of Sputnik on October 4,
1957. For Anita's sake, I might add that those experimental launch sites, the
V-2 launch site, and the radio telescope at Clark Dry Lake all are
archaeological sites that should be of interest to the good folks reading HISTARCH.
What, we might inquire, were those scientists eating at those remote
experimental sites?
Ron May
Legacy 106, Inc.
************************************** See what's new at http://www.aol.com
|