We effectively traded a co-founder of JPL, whose work was foundational to our own ballistic missile programs, only to see him create China's entire Dongfeng missile and Long March space architecture from scratch. To now risk institutionalizing that historic error across the fields of AI and quantum C4ISR is to willfully forfeit our technological edge in the Pacific. https://ordersandobservations.substack.com/
I was hoping you would write about Qian! Qian and his colleague at Caltech's GALCIT, Frank Malina, were laying the foundations of US rocketry while Sturmbannführer Von Braun was still complaining about the workmanship of his 1000s of slave laborers from camp Dora. But Qian and Malina were from migrant backgrounds and organizers for the CPUSA so they were persecuted by the FBI, exiled, and subsequently written out of the history of US astronautics in favor of Von Braun's Nazi rocketeers. Malina found refuge in Europe working for UNESCO but never worked in rocketry again. We should all be grateful that Mao and Zhou recognized Qian's abilities and allowed him to continue what he started at GALCIT.
We effectively traded a co-founder of JPL, whose work was foundational to our own ballistic missile programs, only to see him create China's entire Dongfeng missile and Long March space architecture from scratch. To now risk institutionalizing that historic error across the fields of AI and quantum C4ISR is to willfully forfeit our technological edge in the Pacific. https://ordersandobservations.substack.com/
I was hoping you would write about Qian! Qian and his colleague at Caltech's GALCIT, Frank Malina, were laying the foundations of US rocketry while Sturmbannführer Von Braun was still complaining about the workmanship of his 1000s of slave laborers from camp Dora. But Qian and Malina were from migrant backgrounds and organizers for the CPUSA so they were persecuted by the FBI, exiled, and subsequently written out of the history of US astronautics in favor of Von Braun's Nazi rocketeers. Malina found refuge in Europe working for UNESCO but never worked in rocketry again. We should all be grateful that Mao and Zhou recognized Qian's abilities and allowed him to continue what he started at GALCIT.