From: roberts@CMR.NCSL.NIST.GOV (John Roberts)
Newsgroups: sci.space
Subject: Re: Controversy over V-2 anniversary
Date: 6 Oct 92 04:54:52 GMT
Organization: National Institute of Standards and Technology
	formerly National Bureau of Standards


-From: shafer@rigel.dfrf.nasa.gov (Mary Shafer)
-Subject: Re: Controversy over V-2 anniversary
-Date: 4 Oct 92 15:41:56 GMT
-Organization: NASA Dryden, Edwards, Cal.

-On Sun, 4 Oct 1992 03:33:00 GMT, wingo%cspara.decnet@Fedex.Msfc.Nasa.Gov said:

-> If you really want to press the point and be so high and mighty about it
-> then why did we use the rocket team to build our rockets? Krafft Erike
-> was instrumental in the Atlas design and the Von Braun Team were instrumental
-> in the development of the Redstone, Jupiter, Saturn I and Saturn V.  The
-> rocket team was a spoil of war that we took from the Germans. 

-I certainly wouldn't have treated them like mythic heroes, the way we
-did.  This is a perfect example of the end being used to justify the
-means, with the spectre of the vile godless commies sweeping like a
-red tide over the peace-loving peoples of the free world.  (Oops, I
-think peace-loving peoples are commies--I may have gotten my propaganda
-mixed up.)

I can see that you feel very strongly about this matter, and certainly would
not want to offend you. However, I would point out that a large number of
people could use the same exact argument about the perception among Americans
of US military aircraft. The basic functionality of high-performance military
aircraft is to kill, and such killing must be considered to some extent an
offense against humanity. We justify the means of killing by the end of 
protecting ourselves and others from the vile militant nations, but we do
much more than that - we glorify the planes and their pilots, and gloat
over every kill. Some might argue that the planes are perhaps a necessary
evil, but that there's no moral justification in glorifying them - we should
be no more proud of them than a riverboat gambler is of the gun that he keeps
hidden under the table. (That's not *my* point of view - as an engineer,
I admire their capabilities and the skill that went into building them,
and Americans can be proud of the courage and talent of their pilots, though
I'd prefer it if they never actually had to be used in combat.)

-That still doesn't make it right.  Not persecuting people for crimes
-against humanity because they may be useful to you is wrong.  Period.

But if everybody felt that way, what would the "Bild-A-Government" folks
do for a living? :-)

-Furthermore, I think this attitude of yours that nobody's hands are
-clean so people can't be criticized without an understanding of their
-history is in large part responsible for the decline of modern
-morality.  You have to step up and take responsibility for your actions,
-no matter what--you can't wuss out with an unhappy childhood or a mean
-mommy or "everybody's doing it".  If it's wrong, it's wrong.

I think you make a good point, but a very common practice nowadays is to
go too far in the other direction - for instance, slavery and racism are
certainly considered wrong by today's morality, yet some people go so far
as to condemn Samuel Clemens because some of the characters in "Huckleberry
Finn" voice opinions that would be considered racist nowadays (ignoring
the fact that these opinions are generally being ridiculed by the author),
and Thomas Jefferson because he owned slaves (ignoring his efforts to end
slavery, and the legal and economic difficulties in freeing slaves in those
days). I don't think that most people want to excuse Hitler and the people
who ran the concentration camps, but to condemn all the positive 
accomplishments of people who may have had only peripheral involvement in
misdeeds might be a little extreme. To judge by "The Right Stuff" and
Yaeger's autobiography, many of the early test pilots and astronauts didn't
exhibit a whole lot of what a fundamentalist would call "morality". Does
that mean we should discount their accomplishments? Perhaps the concept of
"hero" needs to be redefined - we can acknowledge people's positive
accomplishments without condoning their misdeeds.

I can sympathize with the German government's view that 
the use of slave labor in production of the V-2 and the extensive
targeting of civilian targets would dampen enthusiasm for a celebration.

I don't recall the extensive V-2 display you mention seeing at the NASM -
is that near the missile?

John Roberts
roberts@cmr.ncsl.nist.gov