Walter;

I am a student of history (and have an advanced degree in that subject as well), and worked on the Apollo and LEM projects as an electronics engineer. Many books that I have read indicate that at the end of World War II, Russia had “obtained the services” of 200 German rocket scientists for every one the United States had.

Warner Von Braun did much to help the United States with our space program. That is a very interesting story in itself.

Von Braun was interviewed by the media about 35 years ago and the interviewer was stating how great German Rocket Scientists were. Von Braun said that he had learned about rocket science from an American named Robert Goddard, and owed much to him.

In August of 1945 the Germans were going to launch the V14, which was designed to hit New York City.

In 1951 Von Braun proposed a satellite (which today we call a space station) be build and orbited around the earth. As a child I enjoyed reading about such things.

As is typically American, innovations, inventions etc. created by Americans do not always sell in our country. Others often benefit from such things.

One area within Russian space technology that was lacking is safety. We had many redundant systems should something fail. Personally, there is no way I would want to travel on anyone’s space ship! :)

Tom





>Vladimir,
>
>I'll get burned for this, but here it goes. It a very different attitude. North american are more driven by hypes than anyone else. In one sense that is great, because they put their full enthousiasm in anything that is new or mordern and above all they general money with it. However, that is not always practical nor econimical.
>
>A small example of the differences between the russian and americans is that american always tend to think they are superiour because of their advanced technology. But if you look at reality and look what the russians have accomplished with 'limited technology' in the space race it is absolutely amazing. In more than a few ways, russian technology outperformed american ones. It is only a pitty that given the poor economy the russian space program has lost much of its glory though.
>
>Anyways, do regard it as a cultural thing. Many american think it is time to move on to something new and more sexy, while the fox still does its work efficiently.
>
>Walter,
>
>
>>Too many discussions here and too few voices from North America. ( not proportional to developers number).
>>What are they scared? MS decision is not critical for their lifes? Yes, it is not. If just SQL server and Window will crush, we shall all prolong to live and will find the way to find meal. This is not clue. Why language, which gave us job ( and fun and challenge and friendship on sites at DevCons) for long time is not enough supported? Where are your votes?