Breaking The Chains Of Gravity: The Story Of Spaceflight Before Nasa

NASA's history is a familiar story, one that typically peaks with Neil Armstrong taking his small step on the Moon in 1969. But America's space agency wasn't created in a vacuum. It was assembled from pre-existing parts, drawing together some of the best minds the non-Soviet world had to offer.In Breaking the Chains of Gravity, Amy Shira Teitel tells the story of America's nascent space program before NASA. She looks at its startling scientific advances, its personalities, and the fierce rivalries that grew between the various arms of the United States military, right up to the launch of Sputnik by the USSR in 1957. This alarmed the US military such that getting a man in space became a national imperative, one that would require the establishment of a new federal space agency.