Overview

From the rocket we can see the huge sphere of our planet. We can see how the sphere rotates and how within a few hours it shows all its sides successively. This picture is majestic, attractive and infinitely varied

Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, 1911

In the early years of the Space Age, the development of space technology was intimately linked with that of military missile and warhead technology, but it was a marriage of convenience rather than a love affair. Both partners in the arrangement were focused on their individual goals the exploration of space and the protection of state, respectively but each needed the other.

In the early days of rocket development, which predated the Space Age, many of the people developing the technologies for military applications also had aspirations towards spaceflight. Later, as the respective fields grew in complexity, these individuals began to specialise in one application or another, but they remained linked by the basic technologies: propulsion, power, electronics and so on. Despite the dual-use nature of the basic technologies, the military and civilian partners were not equal, the military side attracting much greater levels of government funding. Nevertheless, civilian space technologists were keen to push the technology towards their own goals and were certainly not above jumping on political bandwagons when they were going their way.

It is undeniable that the early developments of the Space Age were driven as much by politics as they were by science or engineering. Both the USSR and the United States of America...