Suchergebnisse

Introduction -- Spaceflight dreams and military imperatives -- The Cold War space race -- Space science and exploration -- A global space infrastructure -- Astroculture : spaceflight and the imagination -- Human spaceflight after the cold war -- Epilogue : the past and future of spaceflight

WINNER OF THE DEXTER PRIZE OF THE SOCIETY FOR THE HISTORY OF TECHNOLOGY Launched by the Third Reich in late 1944, the first ballistic missile, the V-2, fell on London, Paris, and Antwerp after covering nearly two hundred miles in five minutes. It was a stunning achievement, one that heralded a new age of ballistic missiles and space launch vehicles. Michael J. Neufeld gives the first comprehensive and accurate account of the story behind one of the greatest engineering feats of World War II. At a time when rockets were minor battlefield weapons, Germany ushered in a new form of warfare that would bequeath a long legacy of terror to the Cold War, as well as the means to go into space. Both the US and USSR's rocket programs had their origins in the Nazi state.

The Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum (NASM) remains one of the world's most visited museums precisely because it embodies the "romance of technological progress." From its origins in the US National Museum of the early twentieth century to the opening of its first dedicated building in 1976 and beyond, visitors have flocked to the NASM to see exhibits on the wonders of aerospace technology. An attempt to depart from that narrative in the 1990s by telling the story of the atomic bombings of Japan was crushed by an organized campaign. In the aftermath, the museum reverted to its old pattern, albeit broadened to include greater diversity in the historical actors it featured. Today, as NASM rebuilds its original building, it is again striving, albeit more cautiously, to stretch the limits of its traditional mission.

The Army–Air Force struggle over ballistic missiles and space policy in the late 1950s was one of the worst episodes of U.S. interservice strife during the Cold War. The papers of General J. B. Medaris provide an important new window onto the process by which the Army avoided transferring its ballistic missile and space capability to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in 1958, and then reluctantly did so in 1959, in part to prevent the Air Force from obtaining it. Medaris's papers illustrate how interservice rivalry shaped the actions of the Secretary of the Army and the leadership of Army Ordnance.