The last of Von Braun team has died

[DJRC]

Oscar Holderer has died aged 95. A bloke most of you have never heard of he is a bit of a legend in my industry. One of the originals with Von Braun on the V2 and went to the States with him to do the Saturn. Ballistics expert, mechanical engineer in the old school sense of could design and fabricate. He also designed the wind tunnel at Redstone and most of the training drones that NASA used post Saturn.

Oscar Holderer. An Engineer.

[DocJock]

I'd never heard of him but the world is worse off for losing someone who can design stuff and make stuff from scratch.

[Simpo Two]

Germany always valued engineers very highly, and it showed.

[Waynester]

Heard this earlier.. We are moving into a time when those people 'who were there' slip into history.
95 is none to shabby.. RIP.

[Hooli]

RIP a proper old school engineer.

[belleair302]

A great engineer but I am somewhat disturbed as to the background of how these men lived their lives in Germany and then immediately appeared in New Mexico and then Alabama showing little remorse about what they were building for the Nazi's.

[Mojocvh]

Hooli said:

RIP a proper old school engineer.

Yep, he didn't even have to get his hands dirty either.

[Eric Mc]

belleair302 said:

A great engineer but I am somewhat disturbed as to the background of how these men lived their lives in Germany and then immediately appeared in New Mexico and then Alabama showing little remorse about what they were building for the Nazi's.

That was because they had none - any more than any weapons designer has remorse for the weapons they design.

[Simpo Two]

The West loves remorse.

You have a boss. He loses his job. You find another boss.

[tontoro]

"'Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down, that's not my department' says Werner von Braun" - Tom Lehrer

[Halmyre]

It's not so much what they were building but how they were built - using conscripted labour, and the conditions the conscripts worked under. von Braun was well aware of this; other members of his team perhaps less so.

[Eric Mc]

Halmyre said:

It's not so much what they were building but how they were built - using conscripted labour, and the conditions the conscripts worked under. von Braun was well aware of this; other members of his team perhaps less so.

Exactly - the working conditions of the slave labourers IS the largest moral problem with the V2 - not the machine itself.

[aeropilot]

Halmyre said:

It's not so much what they were building but how they were built - using conscripted labour, and the conditions the conscripts worked under. von Braun was well aware of this; other members of his team perhaps less so.

You honestly think they were in any position to do anything about that, even if they had wanted to........?

[Eric Mc]

aeropilot said:

Halmyre said:

It's not so much what they were building but how they were built - using conscripted labour, and the conditions the conscripts worked under. von Braun was well aware of this; other members of his team perhaps less so.

You honestly think they were in any position to do anything about that, even if they had wanted to........?

Even in Nazi Germany people did have choices (although sometimes extremely limited choices). However, the vast bulk of the rocket scientists and engineers had no need to be coerced to work on their rocket projects. In their eyes they were space pioneers, not weapons builders, and they were so evangelistic about the cause of spaceflight that they more or less turned a blind eye to the hardships and suffering of those who were being forced to build their machines.

And, by the last year of the war, when the worst atrocities were carried out at Mittelwerk, EVERYBODY in Germany was suffering to some extent or other and after almost six years of war were pretty inured to their own hardships and the hardships of others.

[Mojocvh]

Lets be honest, if the Russians had got hold of "them" the world would have been a different place by now.

Much as I deeply dislike the thought of what went on during the NAZI period, we really did need to be pragmatic about the situation.

Doesn't excuse what went on in the slightest, and I certainly would not shed a tear on their passing.

[Simpo Two]

Mojocvh said:

Doesn't excuse what went on in the slightest, and I certainly would not shed a tear on their passing.

It is interesting to reflect how progress in the West would have been had it not absorbed Germany's finest. Would we have got to the moon? I doubt it. You have to separate the man from the people he happened to work for for a few years.

[Condi]

RIP the last of the pioneers. It would have been awesome to have been there in 1930, and there again in 1970. The same group of people pretty much single handily not only looked at space and thought it might be interesting to go there, but pretty much mastered it in one lifetime and probably achieved far more than they every imagined. There arnt many things you can say that about, and like it or not the funding during the WW2 years was vital to their successes.

[Mojocvh]

Condi said:

RIP the last of the pioneers. It would have been awesome to have been there in 1930, and there again in 1970. The same group of people pretty much single handily not only looked at space and thought it might be interesting to go there, but pretty much mastered it in one lifetime and probably achieved far more than they every imagined. There arnt many things you can say that about, and like it or not the funding during the WW2 years was vital to their successes.

Are you a cretin or troll?

[Mojocvh]

Simpo Two said:

Mojocvh said:

Doesn't excuse what went on in the slightest, and I certainly would not shed a tear on their passing.

It is interesting to reflect how progress in the West would have been had it not absorbed Germany's finest. Would we have got to the moon? I doubt it. You have to separate the man from the people he happened to work for for a few years.

Try quoting the whole post.

[Condi]

Mojocvh said:

Condi said:

RIP the last of the pioneers. It would have been awesome to have been there in 1930, and there again in 1970. The same group of people pretty much single handily not only looked at space and thought it might be interesting to go there, but pretty much mastered it in one lifetime and probably achieved far more than they every imagined. There arnt many things you can say that about, and like it or not the funding during the WW2 years was vital to their successes.

Are you a cretin or troll?

Neither, just someone who has a different point of view to you. They were first and foremost rocket engineers, who were given a chance to explore their ideas. As part of that the only way they could secure funding was finding a military application for the rocket. If you're going to comment about slave labour then you're confusing 2 issues. The designers and builders are on record as being repulsed by what happened in the production lines, but they had no way of changing it. The actions of a few people in positions of power did not represent the other 99% of the population.

I get the feeling we're not going to agree about this, but whatever, life is too short to argue on a forum about something which happened 70 years ago. The view that Von Braun and his team are the fathers of modern rocket science is well held among people who know about the subject.