Von Braun

[Dave Monroe]

>From Albert Speer, Inside the Third Reich (New York: Avon, 1970) ...

"... von Braun and his staff used to talk freely about their
speculations, describing how in the distant future a rocket could be
developed and used for mail service between the United States and
Europe." (pp. 371-2)

Cited in ...

Neufeld, Michael J.  Von Braun: Dreamer of Space,
   Engineer of War.  New York: Knopf, 2007.

http://www.randomhouse.com/knopf/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780307262929

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0710&msg=121962

.. @ p. 173, and cf. ...

"... in order ... that business communications be accelerated and
multiplied at least within the boundaries of the civilized world, we
propose a projectile or cannonball express: an institution that, with
suitably situated artillery stations placed within firing range of
each other, would discharge, from mortars or howitzers, hollow shells,
which have been stuffed full not of powder, but letters and packages,
and which could very easily be observed in flight, and wherever they
might fall, short of some morass, be retrieved ..."

--Heinrich von Kleist, "Useful Inventions: Project for a Cannonball
Postal System" (1810)

"This is the new, and still most secret German bomb.
   "'Incoming Mail.'" (GR, Pt. I, p. 6)

"... and now Pirate knows where this morning's rocket landed, and why
there was no explosion.  Incoming mail, indeed."  (GR, Pt. I, p. 11)

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0106&msg=56509

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0701&msg=114169