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Well? (NASA was built by NAZI Scientists using looted NAZI technology) This is not taught in history schools and even NASA is evasive on the subject when airing it's own history in public.
Ok. lets try the first UFO siting over Washington. A series of Crescent shaped flying wings. These were Horton IX designed and built by NAZI's and looted at the end of the War. Basicly a long range high altitude jet bomber being prepared for Nuclear strikes inside the continental US before the end of WW2.
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Actually, Northrop designed flying wings entirely indepent of the Hortons, and actually flew them in some numbers. It's much more likely that they were the Northrop project than the Nazi one, especially as the Horton planes were passed over in favor of... I forget the name, it was that monster six-engine conventional bomber, I believe built by Heinkel... for the Amerikabomber project.
As for the civilian space program having a large leavening of Nazis, this is correct, and their technology was integrated with pre-existing US efforts. The main advantage derived from their work was *large* rockets - the US had a fairly sophisticated missile program during WWII which resulted in several military SAM's, but we didn't build anything of the sheer size of the V-2. The Germans had done the difficult scaling up work; as long as we're occupying them, why not steal this information?
Another thing: The US had its own internally developed manned space program from the mid-fifties to early sixties based in the USAF. However, Kennedy killed their funding, preferring to put all his eggs in one basket (Orion was killed by the Partial Test Ban Treaty around this time, too). Considering that the Air Force's unmanned EELV's it developed recently are very similar to the concepts they had before being sidelined and then canceled, it makes you wonder if Kennedy made the right choice.
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*Were NASA's "founding fathers" all a bunch of Nazis? Not that I'm aware.
How long were the Nazis in Germany in actual power? 12 - 15 years?
How much of the technology that we obtained from Germany was PRE-Nazi technology (the old Weimar Republic)?
I'm not well versed on the biography of von Braun. Was he a victim of circumstance? Or a bit sympathetic? Trapped in the wrong place and at the wrong time? Didn't he get tossed into prison/jail for a while by the Nazis? If yes (imprisonment, even if brief) doesn't that indicate he did something to p.o. the Nazis and therefore wasn't one of them? I don't know...again, I'm not that knowledgeable about his life.
The Manhattan/Trinity Project proves (unfortunately) that the U.S. wasn't exactly sitting on its heels or twiddling its thumbs during the 1930s and 1940s. How much of -our- technology was stolen by the Germans?
Sean, does your nation teach its white children in history classes and etc. about the oppression and subjugation of its Aboriginal Peoples? ???
--Cindy
We all know [i]those[/i] Venusians: Doing their hair in shock waves, smoking electrical coronas, wearing Van Allen belts and resting their tiny elbows on a Geiger counter...
--John Sladek (The New Apocrypha)
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Well? (NASA was built by NAZI Scientists using looted NAZI technology) This is not taught in history schools and even NASA is evasive on the subject when airing it's own history in public.
Can you blame them?
Seriously, this is as much about innaccurate history of WWII as it is inaccurate history of NASA. Make our friends better than they were and our foes fouler.
But moving on:
As Trebuchet mentions, Northrop did have its own flying wing projects under way, and if I recall correctly the Horton IX was a fighter, the Horton X was the intercontinental bomber designed specifically for the dual requirements of attacking America and ease of construction form simple materials. It's not something we would have copied straight off.
I'll check the designations tonight, Horton IX vs. X, if I'm wrong I'll correct.
*Were NASA's "founding fathers" all a bunch of Nazis? Not that I'm aware.
Certainly not, plenty of Americans were involved in creating it of course, and the rest depends largely on how one defines "Nazi". Many of the "Nazi" scientists we captured were just Germans working for the government, not Nazis in the strict sense. Even those who were members of the Party or who had honorary SS commissions (of which Von Braun was one if I recall) weren't necessarily Nazis. The Nazi state was a strange beast, there are subtleties that we tend to overlook.
How much of the technology that we obtained from Germany was PRE-Nazi technology (the old Weimar Republic)?
Much of the Nazi technology was developed from research being conducting privately by many of the same German scientists and engineers who worked on the later projects, but the Weimar Republic contributed nothing. In fact it was bound by treaty and couldn't do much, a crippled state from the outset.
So the technology was very much "Nazi tech", though much of it had its roots before then.
The Trinity Project proves (unfortunately) that the U.S. wasn't exactly sitting on its heels or twiddling its thumbs during the 1930s and 1940s.
Unfortunate, you say? I would dispute that, but I can see your reasoning.
Build a man a fire and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
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And the same process of capture german scienctist ignited the Russian space program. Thou it is interesting to note that these scientist came form the nazi effort to dominate the skies not all were happy with what was done from there work.
It is not necessary to dwell on what if's of history for it is water long under the bridge.
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*Were NASA's "founding fathers" all a bunch of Nazis? Not that I'm aware.
Certainly not, plenty of Americans were involved in creating it of course, and the rest depends largely on how one defines "Nazi". Many of the "Nazi" scientists we captured were just Germans working for the government, not Nazis in the strict sense. Even those who were members of the Party or who had honorary SS commissions (of which Von Braun was one if I recall) weren't necessarily Nazis. The Nazi state was a strange beast, there are subtleties that we tend to overlook.
*Yep.
And I'm sure most/all of us are aware of the fact that neighbors were encouraged to spy on/report each other, and children were likewise encouraged to spy on/report their parents, with rewards if they did so.
No doubt there were quite a few scientists caught in that nightmare situation: Go along, or resist/rebel and face an awful fate in a concentration camp. I've read quite a bit about Nazi Germany, have seen movies and TV history documentaries/docudramas, etc. Despite all that, I think it's impossible to really know what it was like...unless you lived through it.
And in such an extreme situation, what would we ourselves do? We likely wouldn't know unless we experienced it all first-hand ourselves. :-\
--Cindy
We all know [i]those[/i] Venusians: Doing their hair in shock waves, smoking electrical coronas, wearing Van Allen belts and resting their tiny elbows on a Geiger counter...
--John Sladek (The New Apocrypha)
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Goddard was first with liquid fuelled rockets, in the 1920s and 30s, working on a shoestring, ridiculed and shunned by the NACA which was strictly no-nonsense aviation oriented, (although encourageed by Lindbergh). Cierva, the first successful autogyro. Northrup, the first production flying wing. Sikorsky, the first successful single main rotor helicopter. Von Braun got his stimulus from Godddard's rocket experiments. They were all amateur inventors, doing their own thing, in a world (like ours) in which politicians were not interested in the potential of the invention process if the prediction of future success was more than the next election away. (Thank God for that, in the case of the German Nazis under Hitler, who was even more short sighted, in spite of being "Chancellor for Life.") Burt Rutan, by the way, is of the same ilk, and you know who you are who don't see this, and wonder why NASA doesn't get a move on. The NACA didn't hire inventors to work back then, and they don't do so now that they are NASA. "Inventors Wanted" adverts are to be ridiculed, I admit, but the invention process, never!
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Goddard was first with liquid fuelled rockets, in the 1920s and 30s, working on a shoestring, ridiculed and shunned by the NACA which was strictly no-nonsense aviation oriented, (although encourageed by Lindbergh).
Correct. It's a little known fact that Von Braun got to inspect Goddard's work when brought to the US and he announced that Goddard had been ahead of everyone until 1936 - not bad considering he did all of the work on a fraction of what the Germans had to boot.
Von Braun, for what it's worth, was basically chased into working for the Nazis by a decree banning all research into rocketry outside of military applications.
An interesting change to history would have been if the Army hadn't sent out the low-ranking officer who dismissed the work Goddard was doing as unimportant. It's likely that with funding and assistants even in the same ballpark as the German effort, the US would have had ballistic missiles first and had a huge jump on the space race - unlike the Germans who had other priorities and had an industrial infrastructure under attack, the US would probably have developed and deployed something along the lines of the A-9 (follow-on to the V-2/A-4 missile) by the end of the war. Such a missile would be in the Redstone's ballpark - add a capsule to the top, and you're in space.
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Sean, does your nation teach its white children in history classes and etc. about the oppression and subjugation of its Aboriginal Peoples?
Beyond this little generalization of which you have become aware, you know nothing of the truth. Quigley Down Under was a nice piece of Cinema.
The fact is that for as many as treated Aboriginals as the Slave class of Australia, 9/10 were acting contrary to the laws of the nation. Numerous individuals broke the laws to protect a people who were being destroyed by corporations who thought it ok to sell Aboriginals Alcohol, drugs, tobacco, and pretty much anything that could squeeze from them the profits of a market economy and Religious fanatics who considered them inferior to the rest of God's children. The history you wont hear is the people who gave safe haven to a people fighting a secret war against an opressive regime dominated by the religious right.
Australia being a multicultural civilization is taugh pretty much everything that happened. Only on a broad sense of the truly outrageous are individual cases noted. If perhaps you wanted to know that the Warrior Nemaluk and his band of outlaws ran from Church governed aboriginal mission to church run mission raping and pilaging (1930's) (or as the lads put, it rescuing the virgins from the church), you will probably find some reference to it. The fun stuff like how Nemaluk and his band crept up on the Police and their trackers and threw Bamboo logs in like spears during the middle of the night and how they spent the rest of the night laughing as they ran a hundred km ( they were the best of the best as far as native warriors go-not one of them under six foot tall) across my great uncle's cattle station where they stopped in for a cup of tea while he was driving cattle in the middle of the bush, you probably wont hear about (he wasn't of the christian pursuasion and had a healthier outlook on the sanctity of life and the rights of the individual to freedom from government than most-He fought in three wars and came away with a sense of who the real enemy was). You might say that that point of view has become something of a family tradition.
Most of Australian History is an oral tradition any way. You certainly wont hear about the chinese family that used to sell opium to the local aboriginals in trade for Kangaroo meat out of their store in Katherine. Especially considering that family went on to be very rich and prominent in the community. There is a certain level of 'political and religious correctness'. Crimes by religious groups against Australians are only now beginning to surface as 'something that happened'.
You might say that after 90% of Australian kids described the founding Fathers of America as George Washington crossing the Deleware and Ben franklin, discovering electricity, were unable to name a single Australian "founding father" that there has been a renewed interest in Australian History in schools I got Parks because Parks is where the Radio telescopes are.
What is in the book is nothing compared to the truth.
And children are taught the oral traditions. If you come from a rich family and were educated in a Church run private school, you get the footnote. If you were from the country and lived where you worked, you got the Education of a life time. Oral tradition. An all too Aboriginal tradition that has resurfaced in our culture because of those who did not oppress the Aboriginal population, but embraced them as just another victim of British tyranny and Church of England Predators.
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So back to NASA. Do you think that NASA should be telling everyone that it's founding fathers were oppressed German scientists who took their genius and work to America to pursue their dreams freely? Or that they were card carrying NAZI war criminals and the US government had to 'have them and their work' for 'national security' reasons and that NASA 'happened' because not all of them were of enough significance for use by the US Military?
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What rubbish. NASA doesn't need to tell us anything, because its history is already on the Internet for anyone who's interested to surf and read about.
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I agree with you, Dicktice. This thread has the feel of someone discovering something about von Braun at an obscure website that s/he thinks no one knows, but which has been public a long time; certainly since von Braun's passing.
One issue no one has mentioned is that the V1s and V2s were built in an underground factory that partially employed slave labor, and von Braun must have know it. When the war was ended, von Braun and his team intentionally fled west so they'd be captured by the Americans. No one wanted to be captured by the Russians. The US Army soon hauled von Braun and his team to the US to build rockets; we had the bomb and needed a delivery vehicle, especially once the Soviets exploded their first bombs. When NASA was founded, von Braun and his team had been in the US a decade or more.
It is also worth noting that the Soviets had their own indigenous rocket scientists before the war. They did not capture brains as much as rockets; the V2 factory was in East Germany (the Americans captured it first, took some completed V2s, and had turn the rest over to the Soviets). The Soviets used the Nazi designs and equipment and their own (brilliant) engineers did the rest.
None of this has been a secret for at least thirty years.
-- RobS
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I agree with you, Dicktice. This thread has the feel of someone discovering something about von Braun at an obscure website that s/he thinks no one knows, but which has been public a long time; certainly since von Braun's passing.
The obscure website as you put it is nasa.gov and I was looking for info on the Centennial prizes which is NASA's upcomming spin on the x-prize. The only comment of NASA's history as being the the European science prize where von Braun got his start as being the history of NASA. Or rather the only bit that has relevence and political Spin. That is like saying he is the only one worth mentioning because all the rest signed on to become NAZI rocket technicians from birth.
We certainly wouldnt want to have a situation where Rocket science was considered bad science the way other fields of NAZI research were because they used unwilling test subjects from the concentration camps. That would put Von Braun in the same league as Geneticist Dr. Mengele.
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They were all amateur inventors, doing their own thing, in a world (like ours) in which politicians were not interested in the potential of the invention process if the prediction of future success was more than the next election away. (Thank God for that, in the case of the German Nazis under Hitler, who was even more short sighted, in spite of being "Chancellor for Life.")
There was nothing short sighted about Germany not funding rocket research in an all out fashion. They simply had no substantial interest for such a thing. The Luftwaffe was primarily centered on army ground support and would have found little use for a primarily strategic weapon such as a large scale rocket. Only the Allies (predominantly Britain) were preparing for large scale strategic bombing campaigns during the interwar era, and could thus have had the incentive to develop intercontinental ballistic missiles, although they did not, betting on the strategic bomber instead.
Rocket research originally carved out a niche in Germany because the Versailles treaty had forbidden development of artillery systems. What happened was that later on von Braun managed to sell the A4 Project to Hitler and Speer during the war. Speer tells about in his memoirs, describing von Braun as a man who was good at convincing. The context was one of retaliation and the desperate need to counter the Allied air offensive which was bombing German cities to bits day and night. Hence the labels V1 and V2, for "Vergeltung" (=retaliation) which Hitler came up with.
Smearney, to think it's bad in some way because it was "NAZI" is not understanding anything about the circumstances. The way the Germans saw it, those who were opposed to peace were basically to be found in the Allied camp. von Braun naturally did what he could to serve and defend his country, which he had every right to do besides being his duty, although he might much rather have wanted to design spacerockets under peaceful conditions instead. There is even a famous contemporary von Braun quote to this effect. As far as NASA is concerned, I think it's rather surprisingly open and honest about the German importance for its spaceprogram, actually, including the horrible conditions related to the Mittelwerk-Dora slave labour camp.
In the end, the V-rockets were of course nothing but a huge waste of resources. The Amerikabomber largelly falls into the same weird category, the difference being that it was even more pointless and never recieved any notable backing, basically because it was nothing the Luftwaffe or the war effort needed or wanted.
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Smearney, to think it's bad in some way because it was "NAZI" is not understanding anything about the circumstances. The way the Germans saw it, those who were opposed to peace were basically to be found in the Allied camp. von Braun naturally did what he could to serve and defend his country, which he had every right to do besides being his duty, although he might much rather have wanted to design spacerockets under peaceful conditions instead. There is even a famous contemporary von Braun quote to this effect. As far as NASA is concerned, I think it's rather surprisingly open and honest about the German importance for its spaceprogram, actually, including the horrible conditions related to the Mittelwerk-Dora slave labour camp.
But is it ethical for NASA to drop a big red sticker over the website that pretty much voids the fact that a majority of rocket science was achieved through the NAZI program on something like the NASA centennial projects that needed truth and not propaganda.
The truth is that Von Braun was like all scientists, arrogant (perhaps even unethical) and willing to work with any regime if it meant furthering their own interests.
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Only the Allies (predominantly Britain) were preparing for large scale strategic bombing campaigns during the interwar era, and could thus have had the incentive to develop intercontinental ballistic missiles, although they did not, betting on the strategic bomber instead.
And they were completely correct in concentrating on strategic bombers as well - in terms of cost-effective destruction, strategic bombers were going to deliver much more payload to longer distances cheaper, and with greater although still abysmal accuracy.
Only nuclear weapons - and possibly biological weapons - make strategic missiles worthwhile as a weapons platform. They did not have nuclear weapons at the time, and had strategic bombers and air superiority when they did, ergo, they had no particular need for strategic missiles.
It's interesting noting that the US did have indigenous tactical missile programs during WWII that laid the fundamental groundwork for future systems like the earliest US SAMs and AAM's. In fact, one of the air-to-air missiles, a distant ancestor of the Sidewinder named 'Gorgon', was actually built in reasonable numbers towards the end of WWII. If not for bureaucratic idiocy that ended up getting the thousand-odd missiles they had thrown out, you could have had missile-armed Mustangs taking on Me 262's in the closing months of the war. The original SAMs could have been deployed, as well, but fudning was frozen until the kamikaze threat suddenly appeared. They would have been deployed at some point during 1946 for the invasion of Honshu, had that been neccessary, though.
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But is it ethical for NASA to drop a big red sticker over the website that pretty much voids the fact that a majority of rocket science was achieved through the NAZI program on something like the NASA centennial projects that needed truth and not propaganda.
Okay, that's one page, albeit at NASA.org. I have seen other sites and books that go much more into detail on von Braun and the origins of the US rocket program. I believe even a simple sweep across Wikipedia will do. We are not dealing with any big secrets here.
Do you have a direct link to the page you claim is glossing over NASA history?
The truth is that Von Braun was like all scientists, arrogant (perhaps even unethical) and willing to work with any regime if it meant furthering their own interests.
Maybe, but I don't think he was compromised in starting to work for the United States in any way. The Third Reich was gone and America had to step in to safeguard what remained of Europe from Soviet aggression or world revolution, whether they liked it or not. In this scenario, von Braun's contribution to the New Look was a service to the United States as well as to Germany, even though this was necessarily nuclear, in much the same way as any German who tried to recollect the broken pieces of a country and reconstruct some sort of existence for themselves.
Trebutchet wrote:
And they were completely correct in concentrating on strategic bombers as well.
Naturally.
If not for bureaucratic idiocy that ended up getting the thousand-odd missiles they had thrown out, you could have had missile-armed Mustangs taking on Me 262's in the closing months of the war. The original SAMs could have been deployed, as well, but fudning was frozen until the kamikaze threat suddenly appeared. They would have been deployed at some point during 1946 for the invasion of Honshu, had that been neccessary, though.
Interesting. The Me 262 was armed with some sort of guided missile as well I believe, but I've forgotten about the details. This highlights that rocket research actually has several applications next to nuclear weapons and space exploration. Even the "Panzerfaust" infantry anti-tank weapon I gather was in some ways a spin-off from the field.
Perhaps "Gorgon" was axed due to the virtually non-existant air threat at the end of WWII? Thousands of US anti-aircraft personell in the European Theather of Operations for example, were transferred into infantry replacements during 1944.
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The Nazis did so many evil things it's difficult to comprehend it all. The medical experiments of the infamous Dr. Mengele, for example, were cruel beyond belief.
People have asked whether the results of his 'work' can be used to help relieve suffering today, or whether they came from such evil that they should never be used. My personal opinion is that NOT using that information to do good is simply compounding the crime. No one can do anything now to help the poor souls Mengele tortured in the name of medical science all those years ago, but their suffering is not for nothing if something good can be done with the data.
The rocketry data gathered by Nazi scientists, including Von Braun, falls into a different category in that America or Russia using it could do nothing to directly alleviate human suffering. But the data existed in 1945 and destroying it just to repeat the same work again would not have brought back the people whose lives were destroyed in the gathering of it.
America needed the information and they needed Von Braun's expertise to remain technologically strong enough to counter the growing threat from Stalin's Soviet Union - a very real danger to human rights everywhere.
Information, to me, once it exists, is like any implement; it isn't good or bad in itself. It depends how you use it. It may be that Von Braun should have been punished for his tacit involvement in the use of slave labour during the war. But that same case may well apply to countless other Germans who were caught up in the surreal world of totalitarian evil that was Nazism. What duress was he under? How many of his family members would have been tortured and killed if he failed to cooperate? What would any of us have done in the same position?
I imagine Von Braun had his demons to deal with, as I'm sure many people did on both sides of that horrible war.
As an aside, why is it I can't avoid wondering if Sean Meaney is driven at least as much by a dislike of NASA (or perhaps America in general) as he is by righteous indignation at their use of Nazi science or ex-Nazi personnel?
This comment of his, for instance, seems to reveal a total disdain for the whole scientific establishment(?):-
The truth is that Von Braun was like all scientists, arrogant (perhaps even unethical) and willing to work with any regime if it meant furthering their own interests.
Or am I mistaken? ???
The word 'aerobics' came about when the gym instructors got together and said: If we're going to charge $10 an hour, we can't call it Jumping Up and Down. - Rita Rudner
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I might add, that Von Braun had no control over the prison or slave labor population either. It setup by the rise of the Nazi Party and not by the scientist themselves. I would be like accusing American scientist for today war in Iraq or for the poverty in America, because outsourcing. Both these policies were made by someone else and both the America Scientist and those German Scientist are just ponds in a game chess.
But, when most of those scientist could affect condition in those camps to improve condition, they generally did so. Now there were a few exception like Dr. Mengele who did war crime stuff that needed to be dealt with. But, most scientist doing things like rocket work understood that slave labor building thing will generally produce poor quality and generate a high failure rate in the finished product. That if you had people who were well fed, not stressed out, well rested, that they would get a lot better quality parts than from people who are hungry, tired and half dead.
Larry,
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Interesting. The Me 262 was armed with some sort of guided missile as well I believe, but I've forgotten about the details. This highlights that rocket research actually has several applications next to nuclear weapons and space exploration. Even the "Panzerfaust" infantry anti-tank weapon I gather was in some ways a spin-off from the field.
Perhaps "Gorgon" was axed due to the virtually non-existant air threat at the end of WWII? Thousands of US anti-aircraft personell in the European Theather of Operations for example, were transferred into infantry replacements during 1944.
Actually, the Germans never got their air-to-air missile built. They did build and may have deployed the 'Wasserfall' SAM right at the end of the war and some units were captured by the US and USSR, but their air-to-air programs didn't do as well. As for the Panserfaust, did you know that the US bazooka antitank rocket of WWII was invented by Goddard?
The Gorgon project was indeed axed for lack of a mission at that stage of WWII. However, that wasn't what I was condemning as a bureacratic idiocy. Bureaucratic idiocy is, when cancelling the program, you throw out the - I believe 4000 - actual missiles built and stockpiled, rather than assigning them to some fighters.
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Knowledge is neither good nor evil. If you want to apply your accusation correctly and evenly then every country that uses rockets owes a great deal to nazi engineering.
How can you not like NASA? They have given the world so much, the Hubble pictures, science from outside outside our atmosphere, and dreams they have created. Almost everything we talk about here has it's basis in science brought to us by NASA or because of NASA.
But there is more at work here than the rantings of a conspiracy phsychotic. Maybe more than a little jealousy?
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The Nazis did so many evil things it's difficult to comprehend it all. The medical experiments of the infamous Dr. Mengele, for example, were cruel beyond belief.
People have asked whether the results of his 'work' can be used to help relieve suffering today, or whether they came from such evil that they should never be used. My personal opinion is that NOT using that information to do good is simply compounding the crime. No one can do anything now to help the poor souls Mengele tortured in the name of medical science all those years ago, but their suffering is not for nothing if something good can be done with the data.
*That's a tough issue. :-\ I definitely see your point, Shaun. However, I'd be concerned that fiends of Mengele's ilk in the future would be bolded by acceptance of their findings (no matter how gained), and it would further encourage an "the ends justify the means" attitude.
Dook: How can you not like NASA? They have given the world so much, the Hubble pictures, science from outside outside our atmosphere, and dreams they have created. Almost everything we talk about here has it's basis in science brought to us by NASA or because of NASA.
Agreed. :up:
--Cindy
We all know [i]those[/i] Venusians: Doing their hair in shock waves, smoking electrical coronas, wearing Van Allen belts and resting their tiny elbows on a Geiger counter...
--John Sladek (The New Apocrypha)
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*That's a tough issue. :-\ I definitely see your point, Shaun. However, I'd be concerned that fiends of Mengele's ilk in the future would be bolded by acceptance of their findings (no matter how gained), and it would further encourage an "the ends justify the means" attitude.
Valid points on both sides of the issue. Let's not forget the circumstances surrounding Mengele's activities, he was only a link in a chain. He carried out medical experiments on people who were condemned to death, so while he did some truly horrible things the major distinction is that he gained valuable knowledge and people died incidentally, rather than the intentional killing for the sole purpose of killing that went on all around. Many died horrific deaths at the hands of the doctor, yet many owe their lives to the fact that they were selected for his research.
My point being that we really don't have to worry about encouraging future Mengeles by using knowledge he acquired. Doctor Mengele and his research were as much a product of the regime he served under as the death camps on which his work relied. If the conditions for such things come to exist again, we will already have failed.
The bulk of our advancement has been tied to the willful killing of ever increasing numbers of people, to throw out Mengele's data over concerns of morality while championing space travel via rockets is dancing a fine and arbitrary line.
Build a man a fire and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
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*That's a tough issue. :-\ I definitely see your point, Shaun. However, I'd be concerned that fiends of Mengele's ilk in the future would be bolded by acceptance of their findings (no matter how gained), and it would further encourage an "the ends justify the means" attitude.
Valid points on both sides of the issue. Let's not forget the circumstances surrounding Mengele's activities, he was only a link in a chain. He carried out medical experiments on people who were condemned to death, so while he did some truly horrible things the major distinction is that he gained valuable knowledge and people died incidentally, rather than the intentional killing for the sole purpose of killing that went on all around.
*Mengele intentionally murdered at least one person: A newborn baby. He wanted to see how long it'd take a newborn infant to starve to death. He went to bed every night and slept soundly, ate his meals...while a helpless newborn lay crying and crying for food until it was too feeble to cry any more, and finally died of course.
And his experiments on twins? It smacked of quackery, IMO.
You needn't actually break a person's leg intentionally to learn how to set a broken bone in a cast. :-\
Much of Mengele's "approach" IMO was absolute power (over his "charges") run amok. It rapidly devolved into pure sadism and probably much of that purposeless, i.e. doing horrible things to people just because he could, and could get away with it.
--Cindy
We all know [i]those[/i] Venusians: Doing their hair in shock waves, smoking electrical coronas, wearing Van Allen belts and resting their tiny elbows on a Geiger counter...
--John Sladek (The New Apocrypha)
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It certainly isn't my intention to defend Doctor Mengele, I'm as apalled by what he did as you are. But at the same time, some of his experimenting did produce useful data and to discard it simply doesn't make sense to me.
But then, if the Devil himself handed me the cure for cancer I'd have no qualms about using it freely either.
Build a man a fire and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
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