After the war, the United States and the Soviet Union recruited, coerced or simply kidnapped hundreds of surviving German scientists … and none so numerous as those who had worked on the Nazi rocket programs. As the Cold War heated up, space became yet another field of competition for the two superpowers as each side sought to prove the superiority of its technology (and, by extension, its political-military-economic system). At first, the intent was to be able to launch bigger versions of the German V-2 rockets, ones capable of carrying a warhead to distant cities. But soon, some slightly-mad visionaries saw a “better” use for those ballistic missiles; in 1955 AD, just four days apart, both nations separately and publically announced they would place an artificial satellite in orbit by 19