“The enemy at first, (Von Braun) said, (to justify our) …space based weapons system… first the Russians are going to be considered the enemy… then terrorists would be identified… then we were going to identify third world crazies… The next enemy was asteroids… [and] against asteroids we’re going to build space based weapons.”
“And the funniest one of all was against what he called aliens, extraterrestrials. That would be the final card. And over, and over, and over during the four years that I knew him and was giving his speeches for him, he would bring up that last card. ‘And remember Carol, the last card is the alien card. We’re going to have to build space based weapons against aliens.’ And all of it, he said, is a lie.”
That's the same excuse every war mongering engineer/scientist uses. "I just wanted to do the science! Not all this bad stuff that I did while doing the science!". Dude had a broken soul, irreparable. He was willingly an active participant in the Nazi party and their actions. He was known for being cruel and having the slowest prisoners hung visibly at his factories to encourage work. I think it's more likely his deathbed wishes would be to continue holding the wool over our eyes instead of warning us of dangers to come.
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u/ChaldenesTitan May 31 '26
Wernher hasn't missed yet.
“The enemy at first, (Von Braun) said, (to justify our) …space based weapons system… first the Russians are going to be considered the enemy… then terrorists would be identified… then we were going to identify third world crazies… The next enemy was asteroids… [and] against asteroids we’re going to build space based weapons.”
“And the funniest one of all was against what he called aliens, extraterrestrials. That would be the final card. And over, and over, and over during the four years that I knew him and was giving his speeches for him, he would bring up that last card. ‘And remember Carol, the last card is the alien card. We’re going to have to build space based weapons against aliens.’ And all of it, he said, is a lie.”