Latest Dispatch from Beyond the Stars. 60 Years of the Space Age part 9: The First Explorers

60 years of the Spacee Age Part 2 Werner Von Braun Escape from Vengeance

Watch the Episode on YouTube here:

This episode Explores Werner Von Brauns Rise escape Nazism and the legacy of the V2 into the American Space Program.

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Welcome back to 60 years of the Space Race, an ongoing internet video series exploring the history of the human presence in outer space in Commemoration of the 60 year anniversary of the launch of Sputnik in 1957.

Make sure to check out the last episode where we talked about chief Russian Rocket Engineer Sergei Korolev.

If Sergei Korolev was a shadow shrouded in mystery then his counterpart on the opposite side of the battlefields of World War 2: The German Werhner Von Braun was a giant covered in controversy.

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Born in 1912 into Prussian (East German) aristocracy his family moved to Berlin after their original homeland was ceded to Poland due to the peace treaties of WW1.

            The 2^nd of 3 sons Werner Von Braun was immensely fascinated by Science Fiction, taking Jules Verne’s From Earth to the Moon as inspiration to shape his interest in space exploration.

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            Today we see rockets simply as machines used to get people and things into space but a century ago they were inventions undreamt of in any other era before. Rockets were seen as devices of immensely untapped potential and the young Von Braun among others were captivated by the “romance of the open sky” that they portrayed, although the darker side of such technologies had yet to have been revealed.

            He became a member of The German Society for Space Travel: “Der Verein fur Raumschiffart”, where Von Braun and other visionaries like Willy Ley and Hermann Oberth lay the ground work in launching early rockets of the liquid fuel type. They were mostly scientists and engineers “technical people” gathered together to test some new technology known in German as the Rakete but at the heart of the Society were passionate enthusiasts driven to work towards a common goal:

The popularization of rockets and their possible use in space travel. An idea still years ahead of its time…

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            But for the Vfr their time had come. When the Nazi’s came to power they pretty much shut all civilian rocket societies. Such technologies they deemed a Military priority instead.

            Regardless, Von Braun and his close knit team of scientists persisted with their work. Getting in bed with the Nazi’s as a source of funding during the lead up to World War 2.

            Von Braun was given an opportunity to build rockets for the German Army due to a loop hole in the Treaty of Versailles that did not specify rockets under the list of banned weapons.

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            The world’s first long range missiles were built by Von Braun and his team under the supervision of General Dr. Walter Dornburger who was also a man equally swept up by the dream of exploring space despite his military background as an artillery officer. Don’t let the title of General deceive you. There’s a Dr. in there too.

            Just like Korolev for a time it seemed like the sky was the limit and the team rode their dreams of rocketry to horizons never before seen by humanity.

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            Off the coast of the Baltic Sea at Peenumunde Army Research Center Von Braun and his team would build the world’s first functional (not like my adulthood) liquid fuelled rocket, marking the seaside town of Peenumunde as the birthplace of modern rocket science.

Liquid fuel rockets generally give you more bang for your buck and allow you to control the flow of fuel that is burned to produced thrust. Controlling this reaction and guiding the rocket to where it needs to go is pretty much the essence of rocket science. And the Peenumunde team did this with startling success with their prototype The A – 4.

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            Now this is when the mists of history began to condense.

            Von Brauns rocket project belonged to the army at first; The German Heer. But as the Nazi regime consolidated power in the buildup to World War 2 Von Braun was advised into joining the SS; the paramilitary wing of the Nazi party. 

They were a group of ruthless thugs in jackboots sworn loyalty unto death to Adolf Hitler. The relationship of Von Braun and the Nazi party is difficult to understand. On one hand you see a brilliant man fulfilling his patriotic duty to his homeland while also pursuing his scientific ambitions, there’s nothing wrong with that.

On the other hand: the Nazi’s did some fucked up shit.

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As the war dragged on, the SS made moves to dig its fingers into the rocket program and Adolf Hitler seeking any desperate measure possible to turn the tide christened the A – 4 as the V-2; “Der Vergeltungswaffe 2” “Vengenace Weapon 2”.

Since Nazi Germany could not win the war in the traditional sense on the battlefield Hitler sought a game changer in the form a “wunderfaffe” a never before seen super weapon, the V-2 was one such weapon; the world’s first ever intercontinental guided missile.

The vengeance weapons were built in a secret underground facility called Mittelwerke near the city of Norhausen using slave labour from the Buchenwald concentration camp. The prisoners were put to work at gunpoint in the worst possible conditions imaginable. Thousands of the rocket factory workers died from execution, starvation and disease.

Reminds you a little of Sergei Korolev’s story except this time the boot was on the rocket makers foot.

It is ironic then, that the instruments of humanity’s planetary liberation were built under conditions of enslavement.

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As a bystander to all of it was Wernher Von Braun who really could not do anything about it.

He had dreamed of using rockets for space travel not for killing people. Upon hearing news of the first casualties from London due to the V – 2 in 1944 Von Braun was quoted to have said: “the rocket worked perfectly, except for landing on the wrong planet.” Most people to have known von Braun accorded him as a good man, an honorable man that was put down a dark path because of the time period he lived in.

As the death throes of the Nazi regime begin in earnest in 1944 von Braun who at the time held the rank of sturmbannführer or Major was arrested and questioned for his loyalty for having dared suggested that the rockets be used for space travel after the war and not for the mass murder of civilians. Suffice to say that the V – 2 rocket program could not proceed without him and with help from General Dornburger, he was dropped of charges and put back to work.

            Seeing the imminent defeat of the Nazi Regime von Braun had to think of the future of his work. As British, Soviet and American teams swept through the devastated German heartland in search of anything they could find on the V -2 the scientists had to choose a captor among the soon to be victorious Allies. But not just that, the Nazi’s were beginning to shoot their own people that would not fight to the death in the losing war.

            Der Krieg truly was verloren

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            It was time to leave Germany. As the entire country crumbled around them the rocket scientists staged a daring escape using forged documents and simple subterfuge to bypass SS guards travelling across the country and into the custody of the 324^th infantry Regiment of the US army.

            It would be a new phase of life for Wernher Von Braun, one that would climax with an American walking on the moon.

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            This has been 60 years of the Space Age an ongoing internet series chronicling the journey mankind into space in commemoration of the launch of Sputnik in 1957. Thanks for watching and I will see you in the next episode.

TRANSCRIPT OF PART 1 OF 60 YEARS OF THE SPACE RACE: SERGEI KOROLEV THE MAN THE MYTH THE LEGEND

The journey of human beings into the final frontier of outer space began with the work of two brilliant men at the Beginning of the 20^th Century. 

Both men had worked for their respective governments the technological leaders of the time Germany and Russia, to build never before seen rocket weapons of awesome power  during the most destructive conflict of human history. World War 2.

Deep down, both of these legendary pioneers of rocket technology believed in a shining vision of a human future in Outer Space although their inventions created in utmost secrecy and surrounded by controversy to this day could have completely eradicated any hopes for a human future in space before the journey to the stars could even begin.

One of them worked for the Nazi's.

Wernher von Braun the the German Army

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I believe deserve they title of “Legends of Humanity” in the same league as Newton, Beethoven, Nietzsche, and of course Kanye.

They were men who looked up despite the harsh troubles of the times during the 1930s until the heydays of the Space Race that they would largely influence. Against all odds both of these men would break free from the chains of nationalistic thinking of their Governments’ that mired their early work to usher in a new age of human history.

They were The Rocket Men

Sergei Korolev and Vernher von Braun

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From the now collapsed communist superpower of the Soviet Union came Sergei Pavlovich Korolev. A man so steeped in mystery those who worked with him would only refer to him as “The King” or “The Big Boss”. His true identity was declared a Soviet secret by the Ruling Communist Party for fear that the Americans would send an Assassin to take him out. But we now know that he kind of looked like Josh Hutcherson. So imagine Peeta Melark as a Soviet rocket engineer. Haha…

In any press broadcasts of Soviet achievements in the field of Rocket technology he was referred to as the “Chief” Designer. The mysteriousness of the man behind early Soviet Success in Space only heightened the anxiety of America and its Allies regarding the potency of Soviet involvement in outer Space. “The Chief Designer” would later play a major role in getting the first human into space. Yuri Gagarin.

Dont mess with the Chief Designer

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Sergei Korolev Born in 1907 in Ukraine and Educated in Moscow. Sergei Korolev spent his early career as an aircraft designer before recognizing the potential of rockets as vehicles on their own right and as a means of traveling beyond the atmosphere of planet Earth and into the unknown of outer space.

With World War 2 tension widening in the 1930s Russian Military strategists turned to him to exploit the potential of rockets as tactical battlefield weapons. These basic rockets would be the precursors of the much larger ICBMs Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles that are these large and scary things that could be used to influence a war on not just a small scale tactical level on individual battlefields but on a much larger global strategic level. We’re lucky they haven’t been used yet for that purpose.

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The Soviets put Sergei Korolev along with other rocket engineers like Valentin Glushko, and Ivan Kleymenov to work from secret factories in St. Petersburg and Moscow designing rockets that could perform rudimentary tasks such as delivering bombs, measuring the weather and perhaps one day exploring space. While most of his comrades focused on designing fuel thrust chambers and fuel pumps, Korolev focused on rockets that could carry payloads driven by guidance systems. He aimed at designing rockets that would be practical.

Work was going well until 1937 when a certain Madman with a Moustache, no no the other one,  yeah that’s the one; Joseph Stalin enacted his Great Purge; where he got rid of members of the Communist Party that he deemed undesirable and a threat to his regime, an unfortunate and untimely event for Korolev. These purges are real nasty business within the old ways of the USSR, as an example Marshal Mikhail Tuchashevsky Korolev’s Boss at the time was arrested on June 11 and shot dead the same day.

Purge the Unclean!

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Joseph Stalin was suspicious of “independent minded” soldiers within the rocket program. All the rocket engineers of the Reaction Propulsion Laboratory in Moscow including Korolev and Glushko were arrested and charged with treason. In 1938 they were all sentenced to nearly 10 years of hard labor in Siberian. Nearly a death sentence for the men that only a few years before were prided as top scientists and engineers of the Soviet Union.

The years spent in a Soviet Gulag would have normally broken any ordinary man. I mean I spent 5 years in MMU and I’m pretty messed up. Soviet Correctional Labour Camps were plagued with harsh weather and were normally located in the Arctic North or the Siberian East away from any civilization. The inmates would be forced to build roads and mine for minerals with bad tools and barely any meals in between Ramadan x10. While not as bad as Hitler’s death camps like Auschwitz the Gulags were renowned for their harsh conditions.

Kolyma, still preferable to Auschwitz

It was definitely no place for a Sunday picnic. Regardless of the miserable conditions at Kolyma with mortality rates among prisoners within the thousands, this would not be the last we would see of Sergei Korolev.

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Chinese Scientists break Quantum Communications Record

A few days ago the laws of physics were broken somewhere over the planet. 

Not really the laws of physics but per se, but an important milestone in the field quantum communication was surpassed by a group of Chinese Scientists and their satellite the Micius.

The 'sky shattering' record involved the transmission of pairs of entangled photons from the Micius Satellite to ground stations on Earth while the satellite was in Low Earth Orbit.

Quantum entanglement as described by Albert Einstein as 'spooky action at a distance' somehow connects the state of pairs of quantum particles (photons/electrons/etc) with a mysterious invisible string between any two points in the entire Universe.

Einstein was ... disturbed by the Idea because it defied his own Theory of Special Relativity that set the speed of light as the ultimate speed limit in the Universe.

Twang one particle one way on one side of the Galaxy, and the other particle on your side of the Milky Way instantaneously gets twanged back in response; No line of sight, no galaxy wide fiber network required...

Dr. Brand from Interstellar: "Love is the one thing we're capable of perceiving that transcendes dimenions of time and space..." Love or quantum entanglement...

The clever application of this could in theory lead to instantaneous communications and hack proof information networks.

At least that's the idea. No one has really gotten a practical system in place to implement it.

Until a few days ago  (16/6/2017), a group of Scientists from Hefei University of Technology (MIT China) took a major step forward in breaking the quantum communication distance record. And also a major step forward in further disturbing the ghost of Einstein...

The Micius Satellite named after Chinese philosopher Mengzi, the most famous Confucian after Confucious himself, carried crystals and lasers that generates pairs of entangled photons and transmits them on separate beams to ground stations in Delingha in Tibet and Lijiang in Mainland China. The transmission distances were more than thousands (1200 km) of kilometres apart. Not to mention that the initial transmission point was a moving object in SPACE!

The difficult thing about maintaining the state of entanglement during transmission is that interaction with normal atoms (the stuff that make you and me up) can break the entangled state between the pairs. Obviously there are still alot of bugs to work out in the system.

But a commendable effort indeed by the Chinese team involved.

Set up of the experiment.

The experiment surpassed China's own record last year where they transmitted quantum entangled photons over high quality optical fiber.

China's ambitions don't end there. The Micius is only the first of a fleet the nation plans to launch as part of its $100-million Quantum Experiments at Space Scale (QUESS) program.

Imagine that; a fleet of quantum communications spacecrafts flying over head providing a world wide quantum communications network. 

We truly live in times of incredible technological marvels.

On a QUESS for a quantum Revolution.

This cutting edge program could lead the way to a secure strategic Quantum Internet system shepherded by Chinese dominance in the field.

The challenge has been made, and met with the utmost gusto by China. How will the West respond? 

How will President Trump Respond?

Only time will tell...

Quantum What?

The experiment was done with a Satellite operating in Low Earth Orbit.

If you would like to know more about Low Earth Orbit, watch this video by our friends at Science Epic