1. You too may be a big hero,

2. once you learn to count backwards to zero.

3. “In German or der English, I know how to count down . . .

4. Und I’m learning Chinese,” says Wernher von Braun.

Lehrer’s song criticizes von Braun’s heroic status in 1960s America despite his fickle national allegiances two decades before; the song aired when his luster in American public opinion was tarnishing (Chapter 3). The Chinese reference is biting, because, several months before, China had exploded her first atomic bomb, the fifth nation to do so, after the United States, Soviet Union, Britain, and France. (Von Braun had little problem counting but admitted before the U.S. House of Representatives having once failed physics and mathematics.) Outer space was the call drawing him down his brilliant if morally ambiguous path, not patriotic inspiration. By age 17 his interest in space flight set the course that determined his career.

Lehrer did not know how ironic his reference to Chinese would become, for two years later, on June 17, 1967, China exploded her first hydrogen bomb, 150 times more powerful than the one Lehrer knew. China took 3 years to transition from fission to fusion weapons, compared to 6 years for the United States, 4 for the Soviet Union, 5 for Britain, 9 for France, and 24 years for India. In October 1966, China launched a nuclear warhead on an intermediate-range missile, detonating it at their Lop Nor test site in Xinjiang (after lofting it over populated Chinese territory).