Proposal
A book. A sensation. That was the beginning. It was not a book of many words. Yet what it held fascinated me. There, the name came. I was not sure of the exact name. But I remembered what he had done. He had been a German scientist in WWII working under Wernher von Braun to develop the V2 rockets. When the war ended, fate took him away into Russia's hands. It was he who had invented the first satellite. Sputnik. There and then, that moment caught me. It was a quiet outside. Yet when I read that page, a lightbulb lit up and the stygian darkness paved a way. It was just like my definition. It was he who had carried most of the burden. Yet Korolev got the congrats and the pat on the backs because he had been the leader of the project. The Germans were pretty much prisoners in Russia working under Soviet fame. It is here, that I think that Helmut Gröttrup shines. He is a notable. It was this book that showed me. A graphic novel about space and science all in the movement of the space race between two superpowers. The book had a title with it. And that title was Moonbound.
How and when did you arrive in Russia and who were with you?
The movement of the 170 scientists including me was solely by train-resulting in having myself dropped off at a factory outpost out of the radius of people on the 28th of October 1946. The way the Russians picked us up was when they kicked down the door of the factory I was working in and whisked me away along with my plans and designs, though the Americans had come first and took most of the supplies, demolishing our V2 rockets I every way. I was almost inclined to hand myself over to the Russians when they came, as it was another chance all the same to beat America. We were put in groups and aboard cargo trains with no seats. We were fed along the way but it did not take too long to get to the outpost. Along with me, the Russians had to take all the relatives I had in Germany to share my fate. I was made to believe that the Russians were suspecting messages might be passed between one another and took the heavy burden of brining the family, though all my colleagues over the years whom did not get selected and hoarded off still stayed in their homeland. What a pity it was.
That was how it started. It was only then when I really knew Helmut Gröttrup. He had created the smart card. The item everyone is familiar with. A must in every adults bag or pocket. Yet who had created it? Helmut himself and his companion. I was hooked to the engineering brilliance he had. The way he put away past failures and looked onward. On and on again he succeeded. First the V2 rockets. Then Sputnik. Then the smart card. It was so fascinating how this daily item came to be. How the centre of shopping came down to the thing which was made by man only few actually know. This is the first reason. To pull out of the depths a man I never knew yet did so much in his power to change what there was for the better.
The second reason would be of my curiosity of space. In kindergarten, I remember as clearly as I see myself today, the teacher asking what we would want to be when we grew up. I took a chalk board and wrote a s t r o n a u t. Though my paths have changed, the vastness of space and technology still surprise me around every block. That curiosity never has and never will go away. So when I saw the name, a lightbulb lit up in my head. Who was he? What was he? This lead to a barrage of thoughts which instilled in my mind. Who was he? The leading brain in the creation of sputnik. A German scientist forced to work under the commandment of Korolev. From there, Jürgen Dethloff and Helmut pair up to create the smart card. It is the amazing journey from success to failure and to bring himself back and redeem himself as one of the greatest German scientists of all time. Why did he, not one of the other 170 scientists in the Russian making of Sputnik not contribute as much as Helmut? How did he, among others, drag himself out of his mess? The sheer amount of questions which come when I study someone like him sparks an inner being strong enough to act.
Along with the curiosity, there is the topic of technology and space. This is the period of the space race between the Russians and the Americans. Wernher von Braun works in NASA along with a selected few top scientists from Germany in which they had pillaged. The Russians came after the Americans to see the German factories that the Americans did not take to be burnt and destroyed. With scraps and pieces here and there, they found Helmut. Without the German scientists, neither superpower could have gotten anywhere. That is when it all began. The history the space race possesses and the competitiveness both teams compete with makes one wonder who were the clockworks of everything? The ones behind the scenes? From operation paperclip to the tests and failures of Vanguard I. The reason I pick Helmut in my interest is because he is a name not spoken of. Von Braun and Korolev are heard in the news many times. But the main powerhouse of Russia in the space race was the brain and knowledge of Helmut. That, from Sputnik to R-7 Semyorka is the real feat of a notable.
All in all, I choose Helmut because he is a man whose knowledge of engineering is just as good as Stephen Hawking's knowledge of space, or Julius Caesar's knowledge of conquering. But what makes him so different to them is how his name was not spoken of when it should have been. When failures did not speak of disasters but spoke of a spring to push him up even more. All are powerhouses in their own areas of knowledge. But Julius Caesar was stopped by death and his works were not continued. Helmut was also stopped by death, but the smart card still remains the centre of trade. Scarce is there a man like Helmut. And for this, I would gladly choose him as my notable for others to realize what he had done for the better of the world.