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The greatest visionaries in the history of mankind


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Wernher Von Braun.

He's become somewhat of an idol to me.

My male friends got rich billionaires and football players, my female friends got models and actresses, while I'm awkward person who wants to become a rocket scientist.

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Wernher von Braun.

He wanted to build thousand ton launchers, giant rotating space stations...

He also helped design the A-4, or V-2.

He really was ahead of his time, by at least a few hundred years. As he even envisioned a fleet of vessels to go to Mars, and we haven't even done that yet......

AGHHHHH!

Someone already said him!

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Visionary, yes maybe. But I'd be careful of elevating Elon Musk to the level of a religious figure. He's a businessman who specializes in risky investments and so far pulled it off without getting unlucky, no more, no less. The only thing that sets him apart from most other wealthy businessmen is the fact that he has a loud public voice and chooses to invest in things the internet considers "cool", as opposed to things that are equally profitable but far more mundane and boring.

I'm a fan of SpaceX as much as the next guy, but please be very careful with hero cults around people you don't even know, just because they happen to build rockets. SpaceX in particular is a venture that is deep in the red and will likely stay there unless space development goes into extreme overdrive in the very near future. It's commendable of Mr Musk to be running such a company at his own expense, but I don't believe for a second he won't shut it down if Tesla and Paypal hit troubled times themselves. Business is business, and going bankrupt helps no one, least of all the employees.

While we're on the topic of visionary businessmen, how about Bill Gates and Steve Jobs? They too managed to gamble high stakes and win it big, because they saw critical opportunities where few other people would have, and pulled every imaginable effort to get their feet in the door. They brought electronics to the masses; first personal computers, then portable devices.

Not to mention that Bill Gates has put more money into philantropic work than any other single person in the history of mankind, more than the GDP of some countries. It's an unimaginable sum of cash for the average man, and it has yielded some impressive results.

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I'm rather impressed with Musk's role in developing technologies that most of the business world has written off as unprofitable, at least in the short term. Better than the typical billionaire's use of wealth to simply generate more wealth (Bill Gates is another good exception to this). I'm not sure I'd consider him a scientific visionary, but he does seem very effective at using his wealth to advance the technologies in which he's interested.

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The first persons (the idea probably emerged several times though) who decided to make marks on a wall, or on a clay tablet, to remember things.

Or little better, the persons who invented writing (same things invented several times independently). Seriously, they started history and allow us to read in the mind of people dead eons ago.

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Good call there, actually! How about this fellow then?

"Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg (c. 1395 – February 3, 1468) was a German blacksmith, goldsmith, printer, and publisher who introduced printing to Europe. His invention of mechanical movable type printing started the Printing Revolution and is widely regarded as the most important event of the modern period. It played a key role in the development of the Renaissance, Reformation, the Age of Enlightenment, and the Scientific Revolution and laid the material basis for the modern knowledge-based economy and the spread of learning to the masses." - Wikipedia

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I'd also cast my vote for Tesla. I'd cast a hundred if it were possible... The sheer amount of work that is based off of his is startling. He even got to radio before Marconi did, and to this day, because of my reverence to Tesla, I have a dislike for Edison to this day :P

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On the age old debate of "who was the greatest visionary?" and a choice between the person who invented fire or the person who invented pants...

I must admit that I continiously come down on the side of pants guy...

Because sitting down bare assed on a sharp rock just sucks worse than being cold.

EDIT: Hmm... philantropy... Well it's great when you don't want to make any big personal sacrifice and needs to either hear your name in the news, get some adverticement or just ease your consciousness so you can feel good about yourself. Ie. I don't eat pizza, because it fills a need by me. I do it to help the poor pepperoni farmers...

PS: My personal vote would go to the greek philosophers.

Edited by 78stonewobble
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You idolize a member of the SS. Yeah.

Only way he could keep working on rockets at the time.

Not to politicize too much, but I'm not sure every person who was a member of the SS was a hardcore **** participating in the Final Solution. And von Braun's commission was honorary, IIRC.

Edit: Wow, can't talk about the main political party of WW2 Germany. OK.

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Well, can you name the guy who invented it?

This thread is about the people, not the inventions. :P

No, no one can.

But some say the guy got a crafter wheel or something and put it upright.

I'm mentioning the guy that invented the wheel because it is probably one of the MOST important inventions, everything is based off of it.

Apollo Program and all other space programs would be impossible without the wheel. It gave transportation over distance a great increase in effectiveness.

All things need logistics, and thus everyone has to praise it.

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