They laughed when Krafft Ehricke designed the world’s first real space vehicle in 1957.
They called it “the fat tank…”
…and they called Ehricke “the space cadet.”
But when his high energy upper stage Centaur kicked the first satellites into high Earth orbit… and then the first soft lander to Earth’s moon… and then the first and subsequent probes to every planet in our solar system… and then the biggest-ever scientific lab called Curiosity to Mars… and then flew its 200th mission and marked 50 years of service in 2012…
See the rest of the story at
And see the Atlas-Centaur-Curiosity launch here:
And see the Curiosity mission sequence here:
And see the Curiosity Mars “7 Minutes of Terror” explained here (after you get past the commercial)
