Wednesday, July 13, 2011

Moonshot

     Werner von Braun tapped a wooden pointer on a corkboard to draw attention to a sketch of the command module.
     “How big is that thing?” Neil Armstrong asked.
“A little smaller than zhe Volkswagon camper van,” von Braun replied. “Unt zis,” he said, waiting for a whitecoat to tack another chart on the board, “iss the lunar landing module.”
     Armstrong exchanged glances with Buzz Aldrin. The capsule was the size of a VW Beetle.
     Their mission relied on the knowhow of German rocket scientists. Why, he wondered, couldn’t someone, in the last twenty years, have shown them a goddamn Buick?

No comments:

Post a Comment