2007年12月11日是中国导弹之父钱学森96岁生日，他是中国最伟大的科学家，也是世界最杰出的科学家之一。美国今天的航天梭就是以钱学森的理论和最初设计为基础发展而来的。至今，东西方学界认同钱学森是世界最有影响力的十大航天思想家之一。



He is 96 years old, and China is celebrating his birthday today, he is honored as people's scientist. His name is Tsien Hsue-shen (钱学森).

Even today he is recognized as one of the top 10 influential space thinkers in the world. He designed the precursor of today's space shuttle -- a 1950’s/1960’s delta winged spaceplane that was the ancestor of the space shuttle, in 1949. His fundamental theoretical work on this concept lead to him being called the ‘Father of the Dyna-soar’.

Tsien was born in China in 1911 into a well educated family. After graduating from college he went to study at MIT, later moved to Caltech, he received his PH.D in only three years, he was considered unusually gifted even among Caltech's stellar student body. In 1943, he and two others in the Caltech rocketry group drafted the first document using the name Jet Propulsion Laboratory - the pioneers of JPL. His knowledge of rocketry was adopted by the US army and they sent him and Theodore von Kármán to occupied Germany to interview enemy rocket scientists. During the Second World War, he participated in the "Manhattan Project". He dedicated and contributed greatly to America.

Despite this, Tsien became ensnared and an ultimate victim in McCarthy's Communist witch-hunts. He was put in prison, Caltech President flew to Washington to defend him and took him back to Caltech, yet he was put in house arrest by the US government, for 5 years. As a dignified scientist, he was traumatized and humiliated, he eventually went back(being deported) to China in 1955, along with his wife and their two American-born children.

Once in China, he single-handedly created the Chinese space programme: his work led to China's first intercontinental ballistic missile, and eventually to the rocket that sent the first Chinese astronaut into orbit. He is well respected as the father of Chinese rocketry. In 1979, Tsien was awarded Caltech's Distinguished Alumni Award, an award that one must go to the school to claim, Tsien didn't go, 22 years later Caltech brought the award to him in Beijing. Tsien has fond memory of Caltech especially JPL and his friends there but he never set his foot in America again, he said, unless the US government apologize to him.

Here is a story from Dr. Frank Marble, Caltech’s Hayman Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Professor of Jet Propulsion, Emeritus. There is also a book "Thread of the Silkworm" by Iris Chang.