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Does That Compute?
An aerospace computer expert was guiding visitors on a tour of his data-processing facilities when a guest questioned him sharply about the "morality" of cybernetics, of over-computerization of human affairs.
"Well," he replied, "computers may not be right - but they never wrong."
Wilds of Florida
The Navy, too, had its problems at the Cape. During construction of a Polaris missile facility there, an engineer climbed down into a deep pit that had been dug. Then in a flash he scrambled back up the ladder - with an angry wildcat at his heels.
Going Nowhere
In the early days at the Cape, visiting rocket-watchers so often mistakenly glued their eyes on the seashore's tall, white lighthouse in the distance and waited for it to rise into the sky, that it became known to the locals as "the Coast Guard missile. "A gag film was even made showing it being "launched."
The Silver Screen
Walt Disney, an avid space fan and longtime friend of von Braun, liked to recall that he "helped Wherner get a satellite in orbit long before Sputnik. "Troubal was, it was in a space film he made in 1954 with the German-born rocket developers aid, and although about forty million moviegoers saw it, "not many of them believed it."
Cosmic stillness
The Explorer 1 success brought the most heretic period in von Braun's life. As the star of the show, he was inundated with congratulatory massages, requests for speeches and interviews, and other business.
"Oh, to be in space this week!!!" the rocket man lamented to an aide. "It's so quiet up there…"
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