Rockets re-engineered-a step further into the cosmos

The 20th-Century nuclear arms race led to pioneering efforts in space technology, primarily driven by nations' desire to surpass one another for supremacy in spaceflight capability. Despite the largely deplorable motivations that drove the so-called “space race,” it resulted in a massive surge in aerospace engineering efforts that eventually led to the development of artificial satellites orbiting the earth, space probes that have explored the moon and other planets and the most challenging accomplishment: human spaceflight.

After the first human spaceflight in 1961 by Yuri Gagarin of the USSR, and later the U.S.'s Alan Shepard, respectively the first-ever “cosmonaut” and “astronaut,” engineering efforts were dedicated mainly towards landing a man on the moon.