10 Things I Thought During the Von Braun Documentary

Von Braun's family came from nobility. I wonder if I have ever met a noble person but they didn't say anything and I didn't ask. Technically we are all probably noble. My dna shows that I am related to King Louis the 14th.

He attached 6 fireworks to the back of a coaster wagon when he was 12 years old. He wanted to see how far and fast the wagon would go. He was in trouble with the police. If a kid did that today there would be a serious concern. How did his teachers channel it into something productive instead of destructive. I say teachers because he was raised in private institutions and not at home.

He started working for the German Government before Hitler. He continued to after Hitler. In the 1930's was the ONLY way to get ahead working for the government. Is it the safest way to get ahead now as scientist? I feel like the billionaires have ego trips and will drop you hard if you piss them off. Do governments have ego trips or is it more safe?

I would like to see a graph of the percentage of how people died during ww2.

More people died building the rockets that Von Braun had developed for Hitler than the rockets actually killed when launched. They killed around 2,500 in England. More died building them because they used concentration camp inmates to build them.

These are the ways I can think of:

Hand to hand combat

Bombs

Gassed

Sunken Ships

Downed Planes

Labor in the camps

I know there are more. I think of this because A LOT of us are alive today because our ancestors made it. My grandfather was at Dachau and survived. I am alive because he survived.

Von Braun and his team surrendered 6 days before the S.S. surrendered. Did Hitler think.. oh shit we lost our missiles guy.. I guess were screwed? I am sure there was more to it but losing your missile guy is a pretty big hit.

In the documentary it said "1600 scientists and their families were brought to the USA" Does that mean 1600 Scientists including their families or 1600 scientists AND their families. I gotta look this up now. Damn 1600 scientists are a lot of scientists.

The USA had Von Braun working at Fort Bliss after the war. They wouldn't let him leave base. They did however let him go back to Germany to marry his cousin. So he wasn't allowed to go out wandering around the USA but he WAS allowed to go back to Germany and marry his cousin. I feel like there is more to this.

The Russians kept beating the USA in the space race for most of the 60's. Von Braun was very safety conscious. Was he worried about safety because of his reputation for killing 1000's of people during ww2? Like was he overly cautious and was like I can't mess this up. Was he secretly working with the Russians to make the USA look stupid? Did Von Braun not read people well and did he hire people who were Russian spies? Why were we so behind? I am super curious.

I have been thinking this about rockets for a while now. Ever since living in South Korea. North Korea launches rockets like every month just to pretend like they have some authority. They fall into the sea. I am sure they are picked up but you want to know how many gallons of fuel it takes to launch a rocket?

Well the Saturn rockets take about 203,400 gallons of Kerosene fuel to be launched into space. Ok I know nothing about oil and fuel and stuff. Like Nothing. I just googled "where does Kerosene fuel come from. BTW it comes from Crude Oil.. just like our gasoline. It is listed right next to gasoline as something that is polluting the world.

So I am just going to make the comparison with how much gasoline I use to fuel my car each year.

I fill up my tank about once a week. 13.2 gallon tank x 52 weeks =686.4 gallons a year. So I would be good to drive my car for 296 years for the amount of fuel it takes to launch one rocket.

ok so that's a stupid comparison because kerosene and gasoline are different..

Some homes use Kerosene to fuel it..

I looked online and it looks like people use about 7 gallons of kerosene a day to fuel their home.

so 7x 365 = 2555. One Rocket could fuel a home for a lifetime. 79 years.

Now we wouldn't have satellites if we didn't have rockets. We would have basically nothing fun today if we didn't launch rockets. Right? I am just assuming that's how satellites get into space. lol I feel just a little dumber the more that I type.

But the government can't be mad about global warming if they are encouraging it. sooo. Everything confuses me. Next..

This was due to a rabbit hole investigation. Von Braun worked for Fairchild Industries at the end of his life. Who is fairchild I asked? Well Fairchild is Sherman Fairchild... super inventor extraordinaire. His dad.. was a co founder of IBM! IBM! All of his inventions were boring to me but still. Crazy! They were from Oneonta, NY. I asked a friend who is from around there if they know of him.. nope. I'm shook.