American Decades
Conquest of the Moon
Nonfiction work
By: Wernher von Braun
Date: 1953
Source: Ryan, Cornelius, ed. "Introduction." In Conquest of the Moon. New York: Viking, 1953, 3–5.
About the Author: Wernher von Braun (1912–1977), born in Prussia, shared his mother's interest in astronomy and became fascinated by the idea of space travel. By 1932 he had made eighty-five test flights with rockets, and in 1934 he earned his Ph.D. in physics from the University of Berlin. Von Braun designed the German V-2 rocket in 1938. During World War II he defected to American troops and became a U.S. citizen in 1955.
Introduction
While people had long been fascinated by the possibility of traveling to the moon, it was not until the twentieth century that inventors and scientists began the quest for rockets powerful enough for space flight. The American physicist Robert Goddard emerged in the 1920s as...
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1950's Science and Technology Primary Sources
- The H Bomb
- "Should America Build the H Bomb?"
- "Streptomycin: Background, Isolation, Properties, and Utilization"
- "The Biologic Synthesis of Deoxyribonucleic Acid"
- "A Production of Amino Acids Under Possible Primitive Earth Conditions"
- "The Atom for Progress and Peace"
- Sexual Behavior in the Human Female
- Conquest of the Moon
- "Polio Vaccine Evaluation Results"
- "Transistor Technology Evokes New Physics"
- The Computer and the Brain
- The Astronomical Universe
- The Control of Fertility
- "Mutable Loci in Maize"
- Copyright Page
- Acknowledgments
