I spent most of my 5 years at Teledyne Brown Engineering working with Dr Stuhlinger. He was always the definition of ‘polite’ and took great pains to get all his co-workers to call him by his first name. I recall him telling the Tech Writer, Anita Hand: “Please call me Ernst; I’ll call you Anita.” Much of what he did during those years was promote my Spaceplane and Frequent Flyer air-launched vehicles, and for that I am forever grateful.
I’d like to recount a personal recollection. We were at NASA headquarters with some time off. We went to the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum where he was obviously looking for something in particular. He told me he had donated a solar spectrometer and was looking to see if it was on display. He said it was one that they were launching from Peenemunde. I stopped and said: “You were launching solar spectrometers on V-2s during the war? The Nazis would have SHOT you if they had found out!” Ernst just shrugged and replied: “Wernher liked to get his science in when he could.”
Dan DeLong
Chief Engineer, XCOR Aerospace
How did they get the data?
I don’t know how they got the data. I understood that he was referring to V-2 test flights, not war shots. In that case, a recovered film canister would do.
I spent most of my 5 years at Teledyne Brown Engineering working with Dr Stuhlinger. He was always the definition of ‘polite’ and took great pains to get all his co-workers to call him by his first name. I recall him telling the Tech Writer, Anita Hand: “Please call me Ernst; I’ll call you Anita.” Much of what he did during those years was promote my Spaceplane and Frequent Flyer air-launched vehicles, and for that I am forever grateful.
I’d like to recount a personal recollection. We were at NASA headquarters with some time off. We went to the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum where he was obviously looking for something in particular. He told me he had donated a solar spectrometer and was looking to see if it was on display. He said it was one that they were launching from Peenemunde. I stopped and said: “You were launching solar spectrometers on V-2s during the war? The Nazis would have SHOT you if they had found out!” Ernst just shrugged and replied: “Wernher liked to get his science in when he could.”
Dan DeLong
Chief Engineer, XCOR Aerospace
How did they get the data?
I don’t know how they got the data. I understood that he was referring to V-2 test flights, not war shots. In that case, a recovered film canister would do.