From: monte.davis@verizon.net   
      
   henry@spsystems.net (Henry Spencer) wrote:   
      
   >(Turbopump development is not easy.)   
      
   There's an Nth-hand and quite possibly apocryphal story I heard in the   
   1970s from a contact at Pratt & Whitney, who'd heard it from a German   
   at Huntsville.   
      
   Supposedly, when it was decided the follow-on to the A-3 would have a   
   turbopump, Thiel had an assistant canvass all the German firms judged   
   capable of making a suitable pump, "feeling out" the state of the art   
   without any mention of rockets: "Just out of curiosity, would be   
   possible to attain flow rate X with a pump weighing no more than Y..?"   
   The assistant came back and told Thiel that every one he asked had   
   boggled and said "WIE schnell?! WIE klein!?" [HOW fast?! HOW small?!]   
      
   And for weeks afterward, whenever Thiel and von Braun ran into each   
   other, they would chant in unison "WIE schnell?!? WIE klein??!?" and   
   laugh like maniacs...   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)