75 years ago, a German rocket took the first photo of earth from space (October 24, 1946)

22 comments
  1. A 35mm film camera fitted in between the fuel tanks of a V-2 rocket shot the image. German engineers, headed by Wernher von Braun helped to launch it from White Sands Missile Range, thereby inaugurating the space race as well as the related experimental sciences. In 1960 von Braun and his team were absorbed into NASA.

  2. There is some great footage of these early launches in the BBC Documentary The Planets from 1999 (they remade it a couple of years ago but left all this stuff out unfortunately).

  3. >’Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down?
    >
    >That’s not my department’, says Wernher von Braun.

    As Tom Lehrer put it.

  4. Guys, why is this getting all political, now? Rockets, like many other technologies, can be used for good and evil and of course von Braun was a questionable character, as he was member of the SS and ignored the suffering and dying of many forced labourers. He was an opportunist during a nasty part of history, but he was also a world class scientist. Should he have been prosecuted for his acts? Yes, absolutely. Is this photo an amazing testimony of the achievements of humankind? Also yes. Reality is multi-layered, get used to it…

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