The Missile and Space Race

Here is a history of the development of military missiles and space travel from World War II to the American visits to the Moon in 1969-1972. It stresses the relationship between the early stages of space exploration and the arms race and that a dual path led to space flight. One was the development of unmanned long-range war rockets the other less often noted was the rocket-powered research plane. The first path led through the intercontinental ballistic missile to the first artificial satellites and space capsule; the latter more uniquely American through the X-series and Skyrocket rocket planes to the X-15 and ultimately to the Space Shuttle. The early part of the book focuses on the Soviet-American race to develop the ICBM in the 1950s and the first satellites with particular attention paid to the events and reactions that followed the flight of Sputnik I in 1957 and the subsequent missile gap era.