Why the race for space has only just begun

On May 2, 1945, just a few days before World War II ended and two days after Adolf Hitler committed suicide, Nazi scientist Wernher von Braun and his team of engineers surrendered to American soldiers.“The grizzled GIs who received von Braun’s surrender were skeptical of the urbane, self-assured German’s claims,” write Emily Carney and Bruce McCandless III in their new book, “Star Bound: A Beginner’s Guide to the American Space Program, from Goddard’s Rockets to Goldilocks Planets and Everything in Between” (University of Nebraska Press), out now.He claimed to be Hitler’s leading rocket scientist, the man who invented the V-2, the world’s first long-range guided ballistic missile.As one soldier recalled thinking, “If we hadn’t caught the biggest scientist in the Third Reich, we had certainly caught the biggest liar!” But they took him into custody anyway, and brought him back to the United States where he was not only free to continue his research, but would become “crucial to the development of the American space program,” the authors write.When we think of space exploration, the first names that come to mind are usually icons like John Glenn, Neil Armstrong, and Buzz Aldrin, the pioneers who became the public faces of our cosmic ambitions.

But there were other trailblazers who were just as important.“The story of space exploration is weirder and more compelling than you’ve been led to believe,” write Carney and McCandless.Although Von Braun was an officer in the German Schutzstaffel, or SS, he often claimed he only did so to avoid imprisonment.

In fact, in March of 1944, Nazi officials tried to prosecute him for “wanting to build a rocket that could reach the moon, rather than Mons (the city in Belgium),” write the authors.Von Braun wasn’t the only Nazi rocket scientist recruited after the war.Operation Paperclip, a secret American program designed to “secure as much of the dark magic of the Nazi rocket program as the...