JerryChicken wrote:I quite like this portion of his speech to Rice University on the decision to start the Apollo Lunar project...
But if I were to say, my fellow citizens, that we shall send to the moon, 240,000 miles away from the control station in Houston, a giant rocket more than 300 feet tall, the length of this football field, made of new metal alloys, some of which have not yet been invented, capable of standing heat and stresses several times more than have ever been experienced, fitted together with a precision better than the finest watch, carrying all the equipment needed for propulsion, guidance, control, communications, food and survival, on an untried mission, to an unknown celestial body, and then return it safely to earth, re-entering the atmosphere at speeds of over 25,000 miles per hour, causing heat about half that of the temperature of the sun--almost as hot as it is here today--and do all this, and do it right, and do it first before this decade is out--then we must be bold.
"...some of which have not yet been invented..." sort of puts the thing into context, that speech was in 1962.
Sounds like innovation, but he did have hundreds of nazi scientists telling him it was going to happen. Their technology was so far ahead of the yanks. People like Dr Wagner and of course Von Braun, who you'll see in mission control the day they landed on the moon.
Operation Paperclip. Look it up, but not on wikipedia. Still, none of them were really nazis of course. (cough cough) For those who remember a BBC documentary on it years ago I think it may have been titled something like "The Paperclip conspiracy" where files were changed form saying some of the thousands of missile, computer and miltary technologists were stamped as Nazis, but on the next interviews, were stamped as being NOT nazis and were sent to the US so the Soviets couldn't get them.
Anyway back to JFK. Everyone remembers where they were when JFK was shot in the head... apart from JFK himself of course. I fan Q.
