From Publishers Weekly
In an informative and entertaining history of rocketry, from Robert Goddard's experiments in the 1920s to President Kennedy's 1961 decision to launch the manned lunar program, Wulforst ( Breakthrough to the Computer Age ) covers a lot of territory in a nontechnical style. He describes Wernher von Braun's work on the V-1 and V-2 "buzz bombs" and his postwar career in the U.S. missile program; the contributions of Theodore von Karmann and his proteges at Caltech's Jet Propulsion Lab, Frank Malina and Hsue-Shen Tsien (the former quit in protest over the increasingly military application of missile technology, the latter ran afoul of McCarthyite hysteria); and infuses the story of the mating of rocketry and nuclear weapons with a dramatic account of the rivalry between the Army and the Air Force over dominance of rocket research and development. This is a first-class popular history about the dreamers, tinkerers, scientists and engineers who struggled against great odds to break through the space barrier. Photos.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.
