Chapter 80: I’m Not Talking About Anyone Specific
Kennedy’s speech and everything that happened at Cape Canaveral spread throughout the world through newspapers in just one week.
In this one week, it made the front-page headlines of countless media outlets.
From newspapers to television to radio, all the media you can think of were discussing this matter.
However, the vast majority of the media’s attention was focused on Kennedy and the White House, and no one cared about Lin Ran’s prophecy at all.
It was already quite good if Lin Ran’s prophecy got even a paragraph mention in a newspaper’s headline report.
Even if some newspapers specifically talked about this matter, the attention was not focused on Lin Ran’s prophecy itself, but rather that the whole thing was a conspiracy arranged by the White House.
Just like Kissinger stirring things up around the world, even though many things were led by him, people at the time thought it was the White House’s idea.
But inside NASA, the reaction was completely different, because inside NASA they could see Lin Ran’s prediction, and they had the complete data on the Freedom 7 crash.
Including this time directly leading to the suicide of Robert Gilruth, the director of the ground control center, and who knows how many subsequent staff would be implicated.
Everyone thought of whether McCarthy was going to make a comeback.
It’s just that this time McCarthy’s target was different.
“What the f**k! How is that possible!” Ernst Schuster, director of the Ion Propulsion Laboratory at Marshall Space Flight Center, compared Lin Ran’s prophecy with NASA’s internal report on the Freedom 7 mishap and found that his predictions on time were so precise.
Ernst Schuster had heard of Lin Ran’s name early on; he saw it in a letter Haines wrote to him, where he described this young man with yellow skin he met as unparalleled in heaven and on earth.
Haines also mentioned in the letter that if he could join NASA, it would be very helpful to their Mercury Program, and hoped Schuster would help arrange an interview.
Schuster was Haines’s boss’s boss, a scientist dug out from Germany by America in Operation Paperclip.
Unlike Von Braun, who had always been in the rear responsible for rocket research and development, Schuster had personally participated in combat, been sent to the front lines, and even fought in the Battle of Stalingrad as a lance corporal.
Therefore, Schuster could be said to have a will of steel; those who trekked back to Germany on foot in that cold winter were all tough guys.
Schuster and Haines had a good personal relationship, and he soon arranged the interview, but after Haines returned to Redstone Arsenal, he told him that the other party had gone to teach at Columbia University.
Schuster didn’t pay much attention to it, after all, there were too many geniuses among the thousands of scientists at Redstone Arsenal; Lin Ran’s genius only existed in Haines’s letter, and he hadn’t seen it with his own eyes.
Later, hearing this name again was in the newspapers, on the science pages, where this young man named Randolph Lin kept creating new miracles in the field of mathematics.
This made Schuster a bit regretful that he hadn’t been more decisive at the time to go to New York personally to meet him.
The most recent time he heard this name was because the other party had indeed come to work at NASA, but not as an engineer under him, but as his immediate superior, the top superior of the entire NASA.
And upon arrival, he gave everyone a slap in the face.
Using an extremely precise prophecy to slap the faces of everyone at NASA.
Lin Ran’s handwritten prediction manuscript had been replicated everywhere, almost every NASA scientist had a copy.
Everyone, besides being shocked that he predicted the mishap time, deviation angle, and final crash cause accurately, had only one feeling: being slapped in the face, slapped hard in the face.
As a high-level official at NASA, Schuster felt this even more strongly.
In his office besides him was Kurt Debus, the launch operations director at Cape Canaveral, who asked:
“Kurt, was Lin watching the entire time at the Cape Canaveral Launch Site?”
Kurt nodded: “Yes, I accompanied him the whole time; Lin toured the rocket and Freedom 7.
But the circuitry was sealed; he couldn’t see the interior from outside, only look at the internal design of Freedom 7 from the blueprints.
When Director Webber was touring the rocket, Lin just glanced at it from afar; he spent most of his time in the meeting room looking at the design drawings of Freedom 7.
I thought at the time that he was very interested in the control system design of Freedom 7, but I didn’t expect he came to find fault.
Additionally, from manufacturing completion to installation to launch of Freedom 7, the whole process was watched by security personnel, and no one from outside the launch base had contact during that time.”
Kurt said indignantly, you saw the problem, why didn’t you say it earlier; if you had said it earlier, we wouldn’t have wasted such an opportunity in vain.
“I understand.” Schuster sighed deeply: “Who let them find our weakness.
But I still don’t understand, how did he dare to bet?”
Kurt asked: “Bet? They must have prepared for both success and failure at the same time; if we had launched successfully, they could have just said something else.”
Schuster explained: “Of course, they definitely considered both success and failure; the bet I’m talking about is, how did Lin dare to write the failure process so precisely, precise to the minute.
Wasn’t he afraid the prophecy would fail?
Even more terrifying is that he prophesied correctly, and the prophesied time matched the actual situation exactly.
This can’t be explained by prior preparation; just looking at the circuit diagrams to prophesy this failure.
Problems that we couldn’t find after checking back and forth for half a year, he saw with just a glance, and made such a precise and bold prophecy.
This is telling us that his attainments in the field of aerospace are no less than in mathematics; don’t treat him as an outsider.
In management there is James Webb, in technology there is Randolph Lin.
NASA is about to face a turmoil, and we have no reason to oppose it.”
If you lose, you have to admit it.
If your weakness is found by someone, you have to admit it even more.
Besides Special Assistant for Aerospace Affairs, Lin Ran also took on a new position: NASA Manned Spaceflight Office Director.
This is a newly established internal office responsible for centrally managing NASA’s manned spaceflight programs, which also includes manned moon landing.
It can be said to be the most powerful internal institution in the Apollo Program.
After the Freedom 7 incident, whether James Webb or the White House, everyone felt that in terms of technology, only Lin Ran could be trusted.
Additionally, Lin Ran also joined the NASA accident investigation committee as an investigator, responsible for assisting James Webb in rooting out problematic personnel inside NASA.
Redstone Arsenal meeting room, engineers and managers at GS-9 level and above gathered together; Lin Ran sat in the center of the tiered meeting room.
Facing the crowd of NASA staff below the stage, in the first row below, locking eyes with him was Von Braun.
“Hello everyone, this is the first time I’m meeting with everyone at NASA in such a formal setting since taking office as Special Assistant for Aerospace Affairs.
I’m not saying anyone in particular; I’m saying all of you present are trash.”
