The British Space Race, BBC 2004, PART. 1
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BBC INFO: The space race might seem a two-horse race between America and the Soviet Union, but for a short time Britain was the unlikely player in the world of rocket research. This is the story of the unsung pioneers of British space exploration - the rocket engineers, the scientists and the dreamers who, despite lack of resources, never gave up on their vision for bringing the future into the present. Featuring the original rocket engineers and Professor Colin Pillinger, lead scientist of Beagle 2.
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My Dad was the senior engineer at Highdown oTest Site n the Isle of Wight. Heres a song I wrote about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XVy6993jnI&feature=youtu.be&a
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Who's the fraud in the sunglasses. What a joker.
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@Graviton64 its about British space and rocket development not a general history of space and rockets , before you facepalm the program use your fingers and dig the shit out of your ears so you can listen and hear better.
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I could facepalm through half of this documentary. The spin on various accounts is incredible.
1. ... Not even a mention of Robert Goddard, who had hundreds of rocket patents by the time Braun started in rocket research. The V2 engine was actually based on Goddard's designs. Goddard even claimed that the Nazis stole his designs after inspecting a captured V2 at the end of the war.
To be fair, Braun's TEAM made fantastic developments in guided missile technology. An example was first implementing inertial gyroscopic guidance, after starting with radio beam tech. Yet those weren't Braun's own work.
2. Again, not even a mention of Hermann Oberth, who was already famous for technical development of rockets when Braun was just 18. Braun was a young assistant to Oberth, and said of Oberth:
"Hermann Oberth was the first, who when thinking about the possibility of spaceships grabbed a slide-rule and presented mathematically analyzed concepts and designs.... I, myself, owe to him not only the guiding-star of my life, but also my first contact with the theoretical and practical aspects of rocketry and space travel. A place of honor should be reserved in the history of science and technology for his ground-breaking contributions in the field of astronautics." http://www.oberth-museum.org/index_e.html
3. Braun himself was a visionary. He was pivotal within the Nazi program at motivating government interest in rocketry, shaking hands with the right people, and having the charisma often accompanying people of European nobility, like Braun was -- like many of the senior military commanders at that time. Braun also worked under Major General Walter Dornberger, who was at the center of both V1 and V2 programs, and pushed rocketry for military use as the top commander for all artillery. Braun was also connected in higher circles, such as his father being the Minister of Agriculture during the Weimar Republic. The same applied to people in Washington, DC after the war.
Saying Braun was the father of rocketry is as ridiculous as saying Steve Jobs invented or was "the genius" behind the iPhone, when Jobs was only a visionary for the Apple consumer products culture. And that's it. I don't know of anybody who actually liked Jobs, yet people who were close to him tend to whitewash his true, privately horrific personality problems, for the excuse of others sharing in the great riches of Apple's original employees' stock growth.
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Meeting in the Aisle?? Haha, nice choice!
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People didn't know we had this.
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I never knew we had a space programme, that would of been awsome if we still had it, or if we would launch some rockets for the European space program in England, because it would mean we would be part of it
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Wow! I had no idea! Thanks! Too bad they didn't keep it up. Can you imagine a 3 way race to the moon back then? Thanks again for posting this!
19m 42sLenght
40Rating