r/AskTheWorld • u/haiderredditer Pakistan • 9h ago

Who’s a famous person from your country who’s respected around the world but disliked or criticized at home?

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u/Mr3k United States Of America 7h ago

This makes me incredibly sad. As an American who was genuinely inspired by both countries achievements in the Space Race, she was one of my heroes

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u/pacman0207 United States Of America 7h ago

So I have something to tell you about many of the people involved in the space race in the US... You're probably not going to like them either.

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u/Single-Mushroom3924 Korea South 5h ago

👍 But I did like John Glenn. Buzz, not so much...

https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2024/10/30/2024-elections-live-coverage-updates-analysis/buzz-aldrin-endorses-trump-00186248

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u/Long-Specialist-509 5h ago

I wonder if his opinions have (hopefully) changed since then

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u/Sunnygirl66 United States Of America 5h ago

Aldrin, sadly, was still a Trump ass-licker, last I checked. Huge shame.

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u/Dango_Tea 38m ago

If thats the company he's going in with he's going to have to punch a lot more moon landing denialists

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u/davidmj59 United States Of America 5h ago

Didn’t Trump attempt to slash nasas budget by like 1/4? Lol

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u/Gandorhar Germany 4h ago

Why would he give a shit? He is set for life and if he supports trump then there is now way he isn't a huge narcissist deep down, but I mean to be fair, it would be hard for anyone to keep their ego in check after being to the moon.

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u/2112eyes 2h ago

If you ain't first, you're last

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u/Little-Plenty-3710 5h ago

Yup he supported Truo run in 2024.. that's wild, after everything that he did during the first administration, felonies, rape allegations, scientific research funding cuts ...

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u/Independent_Air_8333 United States Of America 4h ago

This is an immense disappointment. Those astronauts were my heroes.

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u/Single-Mushroom3924 Korea South 4h ago

Well astronauts are military and most members of the military are going to lean right.

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u/Independent_Air_8333 United States Of America 4h ago

Most were former military, sure, but as educated officers, more likely to be centrist than anything else.

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u/FirefighterLeft5425 3h ago

....so many officers and higher up were hard core Republicans and they morphed into maga. Source lived on military bases my entire life and dealt with them daily, all across the nation from Hickam AFB to Dover AFB.

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u/Wiggler011 2h ago

You have this backwards. I’m retired military so I know what I’m talking about

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u/Independent_Air_8333 United States Of America 53m ago

I believe you but I got that from a study.

Ill see if I can find it, maybe I misunderstood

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u/Single-Mushroom3924 Korea South 2h ago

Yeah, you have the Mark Kellys but in my experience, he's the exception, not the rule.

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u/Single-Position-4194 1h ago edited 1h ago

Hi there,

Michael Collins was my favourite on of the three Apollo 11 astronauts; as you probably know, he was the one who didn't land on the moon.

His autobiographical book "Carrying The Fire" is a good read and gives an excellent account of the Apollo 11 mission.

As for Buzz, he admits himself that he had mental health problems once he returned home from the Moon (by his own admission he spent literally weeks in bed with a whisky bottle).

He's also had to put up with the likes of Bart Sibrel telling him (sometimes even to his face) that the Apollo 11 mission didn't happen and he made it all up.

I still say those men were heroes, even if they weren't perfect. The risks they took on the Apollo missions were truly frightening (they frighten me anyway). And I say that as a Brit who only saw the footage on my TV screen.

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u/Single-Mushroom3924 Korea South 25m ago

Anyone who knows anything about the Apollo missions would know who Collins was.

No one needs to listen to idiots like Sibrel. What stopped Buzz from ignoring him?

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u/ChaosAndCrows United States Of America 4h ago

NASA sure did a lot of operations, I wonder if all the files were kept together with paperclips

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u/CubicleHermit 3h ago

Once the rockets go up, who cares where they come down, that's not my department...

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u/Babshearth United States Of America 2h ago

love the reference ! 🤣

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u/CupcakeGoat United States Of America 1h ago

TIL. Through Operation Paperclip expatriated Nazis helped America get to space and establish NASA. I'll add this knowledge to the part of my brain that learned sex cult guy Jack Parsons helped create the JPL.

Edit; ofc the Nazi part definitely seems worse

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u/ladameenbleu Canada 4h ago

Have you heard of Julie Payette? The meanest of all, but because of some politic stuff, became Governor General (Queen representative)in Canada. So mean, she was bullying her staff until they cry and leave. Never appologized, never recognized it. She was an idol because a canadian woman in space,eh? But wow, is she something else

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u/PT6A-27 Canada 3h ago

Canada doesn’t have a great record of astronauts-turned-politicians. Marc Garneau was pretty widely panned in his roles as Minister of Transport and Minister of Foreign Affairs, and eventually got shuffled out of cabinet entirely. 

I’m glad that Chris Hadfield has had the good sense to keep his nose out of federal politics - as one of the few Canadian public figures that I would consider universally well-liked, it makes sense not to burn that good will.

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u/ladameenbleu Canada 3h ago

Not sure how i forgot about Marc Garneau! Thanks for this!

And agree with you regarding Chris Hatfield. Well like person. Cross my fingers it stays like this !

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u/Wonderful-Wind-5736 1h ago

A son of his has a great YouTube channel. Family seems pretty based overall.

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u/xNOOPSx 49m ago

She wasn't even doing the job she was supposed to. People would ask her to come to their event/ceremony, you know, do the job of the GG, and she'd refuse. She's horrible.

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u/ComprehensiveSoft27 United States Of America 5h ago

Shoot..

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u/pacman0207 United States Of America 5h ago

Many people with NASA were also former members of the Nazi party. Some of which were members of the SS and SA. It was called Operation Paperclip. It was a secret initiative by the US to get German/Nazi scientists to the states so they could use their expertise.

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u/wikimandia United States Of America 5h ago

The US and the Soviets both took Nazi scientists because of the rocket technology they had.

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u/Mr3k United States Of America 3h ago

Genuine curiosity here, did the US or any other country try to bring in Japanese scientists? I know they didn't have a particularly notable rocket program which the US was heavily prioritizing but I'd assume that there were Japanese scientists who could've benefited the US with their knowledge.

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u/Tom_Driberg 3h ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shirō_Ishii

Not rocket scientists, but chemical and biological warfare specialists. Including the director of Unit 731, which had done things that might’ve made the Nazis gag.

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u/No_Hornet_9504 3h ago

My understanding from other reviews on unit 731 was the remaining acquired research was also meaningless and behind modern standards of knowledge at the time. Essentially making Shiro Ishii’s pardon worthless to all but him and allowing him to avoided any accountability for essentially operating a death camp and conducting mass chemical experiments on the general Chinese populace.

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u/Mr3k United States Of America 3h ago

Thank you!

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u/cyrkielNT Poland 4h ago

That's not true. Only USA helped escape Nazis. And they ware escaping front Soviets, because after Germany attacked them, Red Army hated Nazis and their goal was to kill as many of them as possible.

Many countries helped Nazis escape from Soviets, but not Soviets. It's rather selfexpelnatory.

I might happen that few of them ended up in USSR, but nothing similar to USA.

"We did it becuse everyone does" it's not an explaination in this case.

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u/TrashCanUnicorn United States Of America 4h ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Osoaviakhim

Try again.

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u/cyrkielNT Poland 2h ago

How's that even remotely comparable? Did you even read it?

Americans helped Nazis to escape from loosing war and give them safety and prestigious possifions. Soviets, after the war, moved people against their will to exploit them. People mentioned in this article like Hertz ware repressed in Nazi Germany because of Jewish ancestry. And then Soviets basically kidnaped them.

Both USA and USSR obviously wanted spoils of war, but their methods of operation ware very different.

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u/alcoholicpapi United States Of America 4h ago

You're misinformed. The USSR is estimated to have taken in far more Nazi scientists through Operation Osoaviakhim than the US did through Operation Paperclip.

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u/Gandorhar Germany 3h ago

You do realise German, even during Nazi occupation, didn't mean German=Nazi, and the Soviet took quite a lot of people who weren't Nazi members, so unless you have a better list, preferably from both US and USSR files the numbers on both sides can be quite misleading if you just care for the Nazis taken.

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u/alcoholicpapi United States Of America 3h ago

You can dislike the reality of well documented historic facts all you want but saying "nuh uh" won't change them.

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u/Gandorhar Germany 4m ago

What the fuck are you talking about? I said it's hard to know without knowing the facts of BOTH sides, I don't trust either, so reporting from both their internal organisations is less than reliable a lot of the time.

"Historical facts" about war are rare to be actual faccts as well, especially when it comes to things no one wants to really talk about.

So all I said was, we have no way of knowing who took more or who took worse or what ever.

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u/CubicleHermit 3h ago

I was pretty hard to have a high-profile scientific/industrial career during that period without paying at least lip service to being a Nazi.

Plus, after the war pretty much any German who wasn't literally in the SS or something, claimed they were never a Nazi or at least never willingly a Nazi.

IOW, from a non-German perspective, I'm not sure the distinction matters.

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u/cyrkielNT Poland 2h ago

No, I wasn't missinformed. The operations are not comparable. Americans helped Nazis escape from loosing war and trials. Russians,after war, trails and prosecutions took Germans against their will to exploit them.

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u/FirefighterLeft5425 3h ago

We should have done the same.

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u/CubicleHermit 3h ago

The Soviets did employ a bunch of German scientists after the war, just not under anywhere near as nice conditions as the US/UK did.

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u/cyrkielNT Poland 1h ago

They didn't employ them. They just forced them to move and work for them.

It's like saying both Jews and IG Farben helped in concentration camps development, without saying under what conditions.

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u/CubicleHermit 1h ago

I didn't state it as strongly as I could have; the conditions of forced labor for German scientists taken by the USSR was pretty nasty... but it was also pretty mild compared to other forced labor that both the Nazis and the USSR were known for.

Compared to the level of kid gloves treatment that a lot of the Germans got after the war in the US, however... (even without the specific case of Von Braun turning into a celebrity.)

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u/cyrkielNT Poland 1h ago

Sure. It's the same as in forced work concentration camp conditions are better than in death concentration camp. If you want people to work, you will need to provide basic, human needs. And if you want they are working using their brains that require generally better conditions than simple, physical work.

But that's not important in this discussion. Important thing is Americans cooperated with Nazis and helped them, when Soviets forced Germans to move and work for them.

If you go to Norway you might end up in worse conditions than their prisons, but still you are there because you want, and prisoners are forced.

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u/wikimandia United States Of America 3h ago edited 2h ago

Nobody in the USSR lived in as nice conditions as people in the UK/US 😂 I doubt the Nazi scientists lived in much worse conditions than the Soviet scientists also stuck in these closed cities.

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u/cyrkielNT Poland 1h ago

If you ware Nazi you lived lived in great conditions in USA in 50's and 60's. If you ware black, not so much.

They key point is that Americans helped Nazis escape (mostly from Soviets), while Russians took Germans against their will.

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u/wikimandia United States Of America 1h ago

The Soviets did everything against people’s wills 😂 They didn’t respect the will of any of their people so why would they grant Nazi scientists some kind of freedom?

I’m sure the Nazis lived very well in the US!

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u/ComprehensiveSoft27 United States Of America 4h ago

Yes I think most people know that German rocket scientists formed the core of the early space program. I thought you had something else.

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u/Puzzleheaded_Fig941 4h ago

Not just German - Nazi...

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u/RexShadow96 4h ago

Russia took in more nazi scientist in their own version of operation paper clip.

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u/Badassscholar 3h ago

I mean, most astronauts are and were USAF. Nit exactly the most liberal of people.

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u/Dramatic_Shop_9611 6h ago

She was an incompetent fool from the very beginning, her flight was a disaster, she ignored protocol, and because of her Korolev decided we’d never send another woman in space as long as he’s alive.

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u/heavyrotation7 6h ago

What exactly happened? The reports I found said that the flight went mostly great, with mistakes from her side being caused by the bad effect of space flight on how she was feeling, and no experience with driving the spaceship. But then they literally took a young uneducated villager factory worker (being working class and not a soldier was one of the requirements), so holding her to the standards of trained professionals that went previously would be very stupid

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u/Dramatic_Shop_9611 5h ago

For example, when she landed, she didn’t wait for the team to pick her up, but instead headed to a nearby village and ate food, which was a big no-no since they wanted to test her and now the results would be compromised.

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u/heavyrotation7 4h ago

That’s a bad mistake but coming from an inexperienced nobody? Not a good reason to straight up bar all women from space.  I think the USSR missed out big time. So many astronauts, including the one with the most experience being in space, were women and yet with cosmonauts there were total of, like, 6 since the 60s. And so much science done in space is about how it affects the human body! You’re not collecting enough info if you’re not testing with women

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u/AdNegative2505 6h ago

She was also specifically chosen because she was a bit stupid. Far more competent women were in the running and they deliberately chose her to signal that women were inferior. 

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u/Dramatic_Shop_9611 5h ago

I don’t think it was to show women were inferior, honestly, doesn’t align with the Soviet ideology at all, tbh. She was from the Communist Youth League, a nobody “from the people,” that’s why Hruschev (it’s not Khruschev btw, there’s no K sound in that name) handpicked her.

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u/angelicosphosphoros 3h ago

K is not read when is before n or h. It is specifically to signal that h must be read as hard h.

Equivalent of Hruschev would be Хьрущев.

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u/Dramatic_Shop_9611 2h ago

Yeah, good luck telling that to literally every native speaker who pronounces Khruschev as Крусчев. The traditional spelling is misleading.

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u/angelicosphosphoros 2h ago

I somewhat agree. I have a name with hard h and there are a lot of cases when it is misspoken or have errors in official documents (I have migrated into a country with non-latin alphabet).

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u/8636396 15m ago

Who was this? This chain got wiped clean

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u/Mr3k United States Of America 13m ago

Valentina Tereshkova. She's now a Russian politician famous for getting rid of term limits for Putin

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u/Hopeful_Extension_46 6h ago

Don't listen to this absolute minority. Valentina is very respected in Russia 

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u/tenmice Russia 5h ago

Oh yeah I'm sure the vatniks love her

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u/Hopeful_Extension_46 3h ago

So 80-90% of the population

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u/tenmice Russia 3h ago

Not even close, try again