![]() ![]() The army, navy, and air force all had their own missile programs, with the army’s team under former Nazi Wernher von Braun probably being the most advanced and the most overlooked. ![]() After the war, as the Americans and Soviets dissected German rockets, the US still didn’t take the technology seriously. While his work was given little support, Germans and Soviets were studying and building on his designs. American scientists and the US military scoffed at scientist Robert Goddard, who could have vaulted the country in front of all others in the field of rocket technology. That the Soviet Union was the first to exploit this science comes as no surprise to Dickson, who credits Sputnik with giving the complacent US the wakeup call it needed to advance in the space race. ![]() The US, like the Soviet Union, raided Nazi Germany after 1945, removing scientific equipment and personnel for re-use in the Cold War. The juxtaposition of these two images-one of Communist technological superiority, the other of American gee-whiz innocence-is journalist Dickson’s structural theme here. When Sputnik was put into orbit on October 4, 1957, Leave It to Beaver was first airing on TV. The devastating impact of a Soviet satellite on the American public in the ’50s. ![]()
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