Humanity in Space: Then and Now

I'm guessing most people don't know that Huntsville, AL is center for missile development. Dorothea Schlidt, last of von Braun’s German rocket team, dies in Huntsville at 100.

The last surviving member of Wernher von Braun’s German rocket team has died in Huntsville ending a living history that spanned from creation of the first rocket for war to the NASA Saturn V that put America first on the Moon.

She was von Braun's secretary, and helped to retrieve the documents about the program after the British bombed Peenemuende.

And yes, I know, the Germans did awful things during WWII, but she didn't.

Schlidt married Rudolf Schlidt, another member of the von Braun team code-named “Paperclip,” and she came to America after he and the other men of the team were brought to the United States to settle eventually in Huntsville. Later, those Germans formed - along with American engineers and tradesmen - the nucleus of the effort that launched America’s first satellite and landed the first humans on the Moon.

Hat tip to The Feral Irishman.

And on the subject of "current" technology... Primitive – and why? America in space.

The technology hasn't advanced much since the 1960s.

YES, we are back in space in a small way, and increasing. But look at what they are doing it with? Great 1950s/1960s technology, at its finest. (Yes, I know that childish and fiendishly expensive International Space Station has been there all along. “Mommy, can I go sail in the ocean?” “Yes, honey, but you have to stay in the lagoon and keep that twenty-yard tether tied to the pier, baby. But you can fly your little drone all the way to the mouth of the lagoon. If you are good.”)

NASA's SLS sytem throws away everything that leaves the ground. Russia hasn't changed much of anything in 30 years. They throw away everything. The Chinese apparently don't even care who is in the path of what they throw away...

Click thru for an interesting graphic comparing what we used today with the Apollo Command Module.