V2
Robin Landseadel
robinlandseadel at comcast.net
Tue Jul 7 22:08:05 CDT 2009
From "5 Weapons That Changed the World," by Chad Mumm in "Switched":
The weapon: The V2
The technology: The V2 ballistic missile grew out of early
German rocket tests led by Wernher von Braun. The scientific
endeavor was co-opted by the Nazi war machine in the 1930s,
and the research project -- that made the V2 the first man-made
object to reach outer space -- became one of the most terrifying
weapons of all time. Engineering triumphs, from its complex
inertial guidance system and liquid-fueled rocket engine,
allowed the V2 to strike predetermined targets in England from
launch sites across the English Channel, and the missile's
extreme, supersonic speeds made it absolutely silent until after
it had turned your street into a hellish, fiery crater.
How it changed the world: When a single, non-nuclear weapon
is responsible for inspiring one of the greatest books of the
20th century (Thomas Pynchon's 'Gravity's Rainbow'), you know
it deserves a place on this list. As much a psychological
weapon as a physical one, British fear of the V2 was
disproportionately larger than the number of deaths from the
bomb. That same fear was pervasive in the 1970s thanks to the
V2's descendants: nuclear-armed ICBMs. Of course, history is a
double edged sword -- the V2 research effectively began the
space race. Most of the V2 engineers were snapped up at the
end of WWII by the U.S. and the Soviet Union to run each
country's nascent space programs.
http://www.switched.com/2009/07/07/5-weapons-that-changed-the-world/
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