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#47743
Clark
Guest

“…it’s a shame”

Tatyana, your English is easily good enough to enjoy Gravity’s Rainbow in the original English, should you wish to.

Although poetical and surreal, Gravity’s Rainbow is about the development of the V2 Nazi terror weapon that was the first viable rocket of the Space Race, and it is set in Europe at the end of World War Two; all the national borders were down so the whole area was just called “the Zone”. The USSR and the Western allies converged on Peenemünde, to where they had traced back the trajectory of the V2s.

Basically, and in conformance with their respective ideologies, the Western allies got the Nazi officers of the missile teams (Operation Paperclip), whereas the USSR got the engineers. The USSR got the better end of that outcome!

Th end of WWII in Europe was basically a race for the V2 technology, and it was all about nuclear weapons. From the bombing of Hiroshima onwards, the whole world knew that nuclear weapons were practical, but there was no commensurate delivery system; bomber aircraft are highly vulnerable to being shot down before they reach their target. So the superpowers desperately wanted ballistic missiles, and they recognised that the V2 was what they were looking for.
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Ah yes, I had heard of the air leak in the ISS which turned out to be a small drilled hole. Some suspect sabotage, others a manufacturing error before the component was launched.