The Race Is On

When World War II ended the following year, the United States Army captured some of the German scientists and their equip- ment. The U.S. Army had never asked Goddard to work with them. They now realized they had missed a huge opportunity to develop advanced weapons. Under contract with the U.S. Army, the German scientists began a development program in the New Mexico desert, cooperating with U.S. rocket scientists. They started with test firings of the rockets brought from Germany. Eventually, the rocket program moved to Huntsville, Alabama, and the scientists learned to build new and better rockets like the Corporal, the Redstone, and the Atlas.

However, the V-2 and the Redstone could launch whatever they carried—their payload—a few hundred miles or perhaps a few thousand at most. As development continued, it was inevitable that rockets would become an important part of military strategy. 

he former Soviet Union had also captured some of the German scientists and equipment. They carried out their own research secretly throughout the 1950s. At the same time, both the United States and the former Soviet Union made rapid progress in the development of nuclear weapons. Knowing that the fearsome power unleashed by atomic bombs could be delivered around the world without warning in mere minutes, the two nations became locked in a secret and deadly competi- tion. The political tension that resulted was called the Cold War because, fortunately, neither side ever attacked the other.
Weapons experts in the United States concentrated on making their atomic bombs smaller, so that less powerful rockets could launch them. The researchers in the former Soviet Union worked on more powerful rockets that could carry their heavier bombs. By the mid-1950s, it was obvious that both sides in the Cold War had rockets strong enough to launch payloads other than bombs into space. Humanity stood on the threshold of a new age.