RTFA: http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/oct07/5584
CLARKE: Launching Sputnik and landing humans on the Moon were all political decisions, not scientific ones, although scientists and engineers played a lead role in implementing those decisions. (I have only recently learned, from his long-time secretary Carol Rosin, that Wernher von Braun used my 1952 book, The Exploration of Space, to convince President Kennedy that it was possible to go to the Moon.) As William Sims Bainbridge pointed out in his 1976 book, The Spaceflight Revolution: A Sociological Study, space travel is a technological mutation that should not really have arrived until the 21st century. But thanks to the ambition and genius of von Braun and Sergei Korolev, and their influence upon individuals as disparate as Kennedy and Khrushchev, the Moon—like the South Pole—was reached half a century ahead of time.
Very interesting! I love this guy; I want to have his babies.
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02007-10-04 at 1229
[...] daryl.j.m wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptRTFA: http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/oct07/5584. CLARKE: Launching Sputnik and landing humans on the ...