The German V-2.

Rocket technology was first developed by the Germans in 1929 as a way to enhance its artillery power. The first V-2 rocket, developed by Wernher von Braun, was successfully tested on 3 October 1942. The V-2 was a huge, fast missile. When it reached a speed of 5,577 feet per second, the engine shut off and the missile continued to climb on a ballistic trajectory that had a maximum altitude of fifty miles, almost entirely above the atmosphere. More than three thousand German V-2s caused enormous devastation in England and Europe in 1944 and 1945. At the end of World War II American military scientists aggressively seized the technology behind the V-2 and brought German rocket scientists, including von Braun, to the United States. The V-2, considered a masterpiece of technology, differed little from the rockets later designed for the American space program, for which von Braun...