1950's Science and Technology | 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...