New Adventures of Queen Victoria by Pab Sungenis for February 12, 2016

Great time to get all high and mighty.

Today’s background music: “Werner von Braun” by Tom Lehrer.

“Once ze rockets are up, who carez where zey come down? / That’s my my department!” says Werner von Braun

But he got us to the moon.

I live next to White Sands and White Sands Missile Range. At their museum, they have a restored V-2, which was towed as a display at veteran’s parades and such, then at the other end of the basin we have the New Mexico Space Museum, which has a destroyed V-2 and the top stage of an Apollo rocket prepped to test the emergency escape system developed after the Apollo 1 fire. Sort of the apexes of both ends of his careers with the Nazis and the Americans.

I thought the manufacturer would be Acme.

A lot of the development and testing was done at the Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama. There wasn’t much there there then either.

Werner’s brother Max was also an engineer who worked, after the War in England, for Chrysler. He married an American and eventually moved to Sedona, Az. where he owned and ran a liquor store along with his lovely wife, Nan.Both were very active in the community at the time – fantastic people. and good friends.