In the 1940s, the force behind rocket technology changed from the dreams of space travel to the realities of war. Investors were hard to find, and, for rocket engineers with big dreams, war money was the only money available. For example, the German rocket pioneer Wernher von Braun believed that developing rockets for the military was simply a way of subsidizing space research. But when it came to building the military rockets, getting the money was the easy part.
The German military high command wanted a slender rocket that could deliver thousands of pounds of explosives to a target hundreds of miles away. The rocket engine had to be designed in a way that would allow a lot of fuel to be pumped rapidly. Equipment to communicate with the missile and to stabilize and guide it also had to be developed, and all of these elements had to fit inside a very small space. The whole idea was "impossible."
But von Braun's team of rocket engineers was on the way to realizing the impossible with the design for the Aggregat-1 (A-1). The A-1 was four and a half feet long. Powered by alcohol and liquid oxygen, it generated an incredibly powerful 660 pounds of thrust.
The success of the A-1 was limited, but the rocket was an impressive start. From it evolved the A-2 and A-3 rockets, and, in 1942, the coveted A-4 or V-2, the first rocket to break the sound barrier and reach the brink of space. During the war, the A-4 was used as a weapon, but later it became a scientific rocket for upper atmosphere research.
