Thursday, February 14, 2013

Columbia Plus Ten

Wayne Hale's After Ten Years: Enduring Lessons is yet more evidence that NASA needs reform -- this time by a real insider. When Wayne Hale describes problems with NASA culture -- especially the comments on conformism -- he's telling the truth. I was, I think, driven out by abusive, authoritarian management because I am not a good conformist.

Exit Albert Hirschman is from The Economist. I'd never heard of this man until the Schumpeter column. It's interesting that a man such as this left Germany when the Nazis took over. When I was growing up, my family got to know a Mr. Willert. Mr. Willert was a German who came to this country and became a very patriotic American because he saw what was going on in Germany under the Nazis and didn't like it one bit. He wasn't famous by any means, though.

Some Morose Thoughts about the Late Konrad Dannenberg is an opinion piece from an IEEE writer. I've gotten to know Konrad's son Klaus -- deputy executive director of AIAA. He's as narrow minded and ignorant as his father. He privately told me that lots of Americans didn't welcome the Peenemunde team. Duh. In light of people like Hirschman and Willert, the question that must be asked is why didn't the Peenemunde team leave before the war. Wayne Biddle's Dark Side of the Moon: Wernher von Braun, the Third Reich, and the Space Race attempts to answer that question. It has some interesting insights.

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