Ey calm down now. They were some of the most visible members of the US space program, and many people like them for providing that service. That may be the only reason they are hoping for a barge naming. Not everything is about nazism.
> That may be the only reason they are hoping for a barge naming. Not everything is about nazism.
Even with the good faith assumption that is not why these names were suggested, I don't think it is appropriate to commemorate these people by naming stuff after them.
Von Braun had a history of bending the truth to minimize his membership in the Nazi party and climb up the ranks of the SS. It is hard to take him at his word that he did so purely to advance his career.
It is also worth noting that the career that led to him being promotoed 3 times by Himmler had as it's key accomplishment the development of the novel V2 rocket weapons that killed an average of 2 civilians per launch. Von Braun oversaw production in slave labor camps that killed even more people building the rockets than the rockets killed on impact.
There's many heroes of the space industry to name stuff after who weren't also literal nazis who directly used slave labor to advance their career.
> the novel V2 rocket weapons
> that killed an average of 2
> civilians per launch
That's positively humanitarian in the context of WWII. Can you name any other weapon system developed during that war which had such a low civilian casualty rate, adjusted for the money spent on it?
While the weapons systems work for an adversary is itself a little problematic, IMHO it is his role supervising work done with slave labor under horrendous conditions in concentration camps while rising through the ranks of the SS that makes him a completely unsuitable choice as a namesake.
At best it indicates a callous willingness to tolerate the extreme abuse of others in the direct pursuit of his personal advancement.
There's nothing humanitarian in building weapons for the nazi cause, even if they didn't kill people at the time. The nazi project itself planned (and executed) for the elimination of millions, and Von Braun was involved in it.
I'm suggesting the set of names to draw from is large. There's tons and tons of names that could be chosen. The of the potentially dozens or hundreds of names that are hugely influential, the first two picked were from the SS?
You could name it Neil, Alan, John, Yuri, Valentina, Katherine, Konstantin, Buzz, Mae, Sally, Sergei, Maxime, Margaret, Katherine, or Mary.
All of whom are well established critical figures in rocketry history. And not members of the SS.
> Not everything is about nazism
Of course not! But sometimes it does involve literal Nazis, in which case it's not not about nazism.
Von Braun had thousands of concentration camp inmates work on his rockets under horrible conditions. He should have been tried for crimes. Maybe we can name it New Himmler or New Goebbels.
Operation paperclip was a disgrace and I’ll do what I can to not let anyone forget it. The fact that the new US space figurehead does salutes on TV while covering himself in the stars and stripes makes it only more pertinent.
