What a scope to the life of a man The Tracker does not recall he ever heard of (and that’s what obituaries are for, in large part). I don’t usually delve into obits. But take a look at these two headlines:

• Los Angeles Times – Claire Noland: Qian Xuesen dies at 98; rocket scientist helped establish Jet Propulsion Laboratory ;
• Xinhua/China View: China’s “father of space technology” dies at 98 ;

In both versions, McCarthyism comes up. The man was born in China, educated at MIT and Caltech, was certified as brilliant,  got prominent here, ran into doubts about where his loyalties lay, sat in a US jail a few days and then twisted under constant FBI surveillance, got sprung from a sort of house arrest in a rare bit of China-US diplomacy and prisoner-swap in the 50s, and went back to China. There he founded, in essence, its NASA.What a history, in some respects like that of Wernher von Braun complete with, one supposes, lingering doubts about which side, if either, he was on – other than on the side of rocketry and related research.

Other stories:

• The Age (Australia) – Claire Noland : Driven to great heights by US ; Inspired anbiguity in hed – driven as in goaded, or driven as in expelled? This one’s theme is that he felt himself a loyal American but when he was detained and then tossed out altogether, it was time for “calculated revenge.” And, in a stupendous historical twist that  Noland reports, he was the guy the US sent to Germany at WWII’s end to interrogate von Braun. Now one wonders which one’s acolytes, if anybody, will be the first to colonize the Moon.
• AP – Henry Sanderson : Father of China’s space tech program dies at 98 ;
• Reuters -  Ben Blanchard: “Father” of China’s space program dies aged 98 ;

- Charlie Petit

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