For me the highlight was this place – the Kennedy Space Centre - just look at all those lovely rockets!
It’s incredible, isn’t it, to think that we sent men to the moon with 1960s technology in space craft with less computing power than I have on my mobile phone! It just goes to show what we can achieve if only we put our minds to it.
So here I am back to October rain and falling leaves. But there was a nice surprise waiting for me – my contributor’s copy of the September issue of Aoife’s Kiss which contains one of my short stories ‘Down to the Sea’. This story was accepted over a year ago and I’d quite forgotten about it.
Congratulations on your short story publication Kate! And I'm not jealous at all of your trip to the Space Centre - I've only wanted to go there since the age of about four!!
ReplyDeleteI'm off to Florida next year and cannot wait!
ReplyDeleteCongrats on the publication.
Dean - you have to go! You'll love it!
ReplyDeleteAnd Donna - you're going to have a fantastic time - it'll be worth the wait believe me!
And I'm off to Florida next Easter too. Definitely going to Kennedy - it looks wonderful.
ReplyDeleteCongrats on the story.
I was once close up to a 1960's space capsule. It looked like something knocked up in a back-yard shelf
ReplyDeleteDamn, that should have been back-yard shed!
ReplyDeleteCongratulations on the publication, Kate
ReplyDeleteI know what you mean when you say what can be done when we put our minds to it, but for me the space race is not that simple, it was politicised, an extension of the Cold War and though both sides benefited from Nazi technology, the Americans brought over Werner Von Braun who had been a fervent Nazi and his team, who had used slave labour to build the V1. It was his work on the lifting rockets that allowed humans to reach the moon. I have very mixed feelings about space exploration.
ReplyDeleteCongratulations on the publication.
Thanks everyone.
ReplyDeleteSimon - you'll love it!
Mike - which space capsule was that - they all look a bit that way ;-)
And Paul, you know, I've never really thought about it that way, but it's all so true! We tend to forget that the early pioneers were the men who built the V1 ans V2! Something that we should all bear in mind.
Hi Kate,
ReplyDeleteFirstly, many congrats on your publication. And, ah yes, I also have a fascination with rockets and space.
How far we have come. If they can land a man on the Nevada Desert, what next, the moon? :) What? They've been to the moon? :)
Take good care and happy writing,
Gary
@Paul Tobin, the V1 wasn't a rocket, but a "pulse jet" aeroplane.
ReplyDeleteI'm not commenting about whether or not the A4 used forced labour (I don't know either way) but the 2 programmes were pretty much completely separate in everything except warheads and guidance system technology. As Kate will confirm if required, I am an actual rocket scientist!
@paws4thot - yes - I can confirm that! :-)
ReplyDeleteThank you for that paws4thot I obviously mixed up my terror weapons, I was thinking of the rocket technology of the V2. For me there is the ethical dimension of whether or not the people who developed the technology with such terrible human suffering should have been sanitised to meet the demands of the Cold War. I think it puts a stigma on the whole endeavor. Werner Von Braun had been a Nazi and had used labour from the concentration camp next to his factory to build his rockets.
ReplyDeletePaul, I'l take your word for it about forced labour being used on the A4; as I said I honestly don't know either way. I was well aware that forced labour was used on the Fi-103 (aka the V1).
ReplyDeleteHowever, saying "$German was a Nazi" doesn't mean that they subscribed to Hitler's eugenics programmes etc. Party membership was effectively compulsory for anyone who wanted any sort of management position or tertiary education between 1933 and 1945.