Dr. Georg von Tiesenhausen, last of German rocket team, dies in Alabama
Dr. Georg von Tiesenhausen, the last of the German rocket scientists who was part of Dr. Wernher von Braun's moon rocket team, died at his Huntsville residence Sunday night, people close to the rocket team confirm. He was 104.
Von Tiesenhausen - Von T as he was known to the Germans - was a legend in rocketry. When the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville gave von Tiesenhausen a lifetime achievement award in 2011, Neil Armstrong made a rare public appearance to present it. Von Tiesenhausen taught Space Campers for years after retiring from NASA.
[...] Von Tiesenhausen was not among the original Germans who came to Huntsville with von Braun in 1950 in the first wave of what was called Operation Paperclip.
But he had been with von Braun during World War II and was with von Braun's team when it launched the first U.S. satellite and the first U.S. astronauts.
Georg von Tiesenhausen and Operation Paperclip:
Operation Paperclip was a secret program of the Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency (JIOA) largely carried out by Special Agents of Army CIC, in which more than 1,600 German scientists, engineers, and technicians, such as Wernher von Braun and his V-2 rocket team, were recruited in post-Nazi Germany and taken to the U.S. for government employment, primarily between 1945 and 1959.
[...] In November 1945, Operation Overcast was renamed Operation Paperclip by Ordnance Corps (United States Army) officers, who would attach a paperclip to the folders of those rocket experts whom they wished to employ in America.
Also at WHNT 19.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 08 2018, @11:44AM (3 children)
No, it's that the easy stuff has been done already.
Great science is being done still, just not with manned spacecraft.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 08 2018, @06:25PM (1 child)
Yeah, it was real easy getting people to the Moon and back with 1960s technology.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Friday June 08 2018, @06:51PM
After they renamed the local dive bar The Moon, it sure was easy to get there. But getting home felt occasionally harder than Apollo 13...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday June 09 2018, @12:33AM
Technology development and political pork is not great science.
The "Been there. Done that." attitude would eventually result in withdrawal from space exploration because the cost of the escalating feats will eventually outweigh the interest. One needs parties that have a solid interest in the science, not merely the nebulous goal of enriching the knowledge of mankind.