Både Gabriel’s och min medalj för slutfört uppdrap i The Conqueror Eventas challenge: ”Space Race – Space Exploration” kom idag, så vi tog ett gemensamt foto på dem.

Det tog bara sexton dagar att slutföra denna utmaning, med Gabriel tätt i hälarna.

Inväntar bara att han också skall gå i mål, sedan startar vi nästa utmaning i ordningen: ”To the Moon”.

That man is named Yuri Gagarin. The son of a garment maker and a dairy farmer in rural Russia, Gagarin proved his mettle and courage even as a young boy. When the Germans invaded his country in WW2, they occupied his house and terrorised his neighbours. After one particularly brutal Nazi officer attempted to murder his brother, Yuri began sabotaging the enemy’s tanks by pouring soil into their batteries. This was an incredibly dangerous endeavour, and Gagarin was risking a fate worse than death if he were caught. Then, when the Germans were finally driven out of his village, he helped the Red Army clear deadly minefields left behind by the fleeing Nazis, potentially saving the lives of hundreds of unaware farmers.

After the war, Gagarin was finally able to pursue his education. He was taught in an ad hoc school by a volunteer teacher. He quickly proved himself a gifted student and was especially fond of maths and science. After graduating from school, he began an apprenticeship at a steel plant near Moscow, completing a university course in the evenings. Then, when studying tractors at a vocational college nearby, he volunteered at a local flying club, where he was eventually recruited to join the air force. Here he proved himself highly capable, and, after expressing interest in the Luna III project, was selected to join the Soviet Space Programme. 

Gagarin’s biography is a great propaganda boon for the Soviet Union. Here is a working-class man who would have, like so many millions of others, toiled away his life, his talents lost in the obscurity of Russia’s vast countryside. To the Soviets, he is typecast as the perfect representation of the ‘new man’, a member of the working class, tough, honourable and brave who, through his intelligence, skill, and, of course, loyalty to the state and the principles of Marxism-Leninism, can achieve goals beyond the wildest dreams of his pre-revolutionary parents. This carefully sculpted icon of Gagarin is broadcast to both the citizens at home, to give them pride in the success of their society, and the working class abroad, who may one day choose to follow in the footsteps of the Soviet Union.

It is April 12th,1961. In the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan SSR, the Vostok 1 rocket prepares for launch. This is the moment that Yuri’s life has been leading up to. At just 27 years old, he is to be, god willing, the first man in space. He pauses for a moment to urinate on the wheel of the bus bringing him to the launch site (starting a tradition among Russian cosmonauts that persists to this day), and then straps himself in. He smiles and speaks the command:

“Poyekhali!”, or “Off we go!”

At 06:07, the ground shakes as the rocket launches. 1,100,000 pounds-force of thrust send Yuri to the heavens at speeds exceeding 17,000 mph (27,400 km/h). After just 10 minutes of flight time, Yuri is in orbit. Like the Roman sun god Helios in his chariot, he traces a blazing comet around our planet for 108 minutes, girdling it once. Whilst in space, he makes a simple and profound transmission back home:

“I see Earth! It is beautiful!”

Then, as Vostok 1 passes over Africa, he begins his descent. A few minutes later, Yuri ejects from his capsule and parachutes down, becoming, as he lands home safe in Russia, the first man to fly to space and come back down again.

Då har man spatserat tillräckligt för att ha kommit 80% av sträckan, med Gabriel tätt i hälarna!

Ett nytt träd planterat!

Efter att ha varit ute på mitt ”Långpass” i min träning inför Midnattsloppet, kom det ett vykort från Space Exploration. Det var ett tufft pass, där jag på något sätt skadade min höft på höger sida. Fick halta hem från Djupadalskolan och kunde knappt stödja på benet!

Just a few months after NASA’s formation, the USA announces Project Mercury, which aims to send a human being into space. In the USA, a new term is coined – astronaut, a traveller of the stars. The project is named after the Roman god Mercury, the god of travellers and messengers.

In the USSR, the Vostok programme begins, aiming for the same goal as the Americans – to put a person into space. Here, another new term is coined – cosmonaut, a traveller of the cosmos.

Korolev leads the design of the state-of-the-art Vostok. It is equipped with all the life support systems necessary to keep someone alive beyond our atmosphere: an ejector seat in case of emergency, a heat shield for re-entry, and a remote control system so that the mission can be guided from ground control. Finally, the theoretical cosmonaut will be equipped with a parachute, so that as they land, they can eject and splash down safely.

In 1960, the Soviets manage to send a dog up into the heavens, and then happily back down just in time for dinner and a long nap, proving that Earth organisms can survive in space. Belka and Strelka spend 24 hours orbiting the Earth and return home with their tails wagging. A year later, when Strelka has a litter of puppies, one of them, named Pushinka (meaning ‘fluffy’ in Russian), is given to President John F. Kennedy as a gift.

Following the pawprints of the first brave canine cosmonauts, the Soviet Union is now mere months away from becoming the first civilisation in world history to breach the barrier of space and ascend beyond our little blue world.

Even so, clamouring among press, people, and politicians, and a pervading sense of national humiliation and paranoia in the country, make it impossible to brush the problem away.

The Americans are immediately jolted out of complacency and into action. In October 1958, responsibility for space exploration and research is taken from the military and given instead to a newly created civilian federal department –  the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, better known as NASA. This is the first step in the slow evolution of the Space Race out of the narrow confines of the Arms Race. NASA, as a civilian institution, claims that its primary aims are scientific research, technological advancement and the exploration of space.

Eisenhower has, to a small extent, demilitarised the Space Race. He now asks the Soviets to compete on new terms. Will they meet the new Space Race? Where the superiority of capitalism or communism is not proven by how powerful one side’s weapons are, but by how capable the system is of mobilising its citizens’ talents and marshalling its resources, of educating scientists and engineers who can push the boundaries of human knowledge, and of capturing the hearts and imaginations of the postcolonial states who are attempting to decide their own political trajectories. 

The Soviets are firm in the belief that a society that has overthrown capitalism and is working towards building communism has advanced socially, culturally, politically and morally beyond any capitalist society. For the ideologues in the CPSU, there is no better way to prove this principle than to push the frontiers of human knowledge and surpass the far richer Capitalist West in technological achievement. By developing technologically, they aim to place themselves ahead of the Americans as the superpower that will trailblaze our planet’s future.

Still, the Cold War persists, and both sides continue to research the military applications of space travel. In 1960, the Soviets begin the Zenit project, which aims to use satellite technology to spy on the Americans. For their part, the USA has surrounded the USSR with military bases, many of them nuclear armed, and continuously sends out its U2 spyplanes, which can fly over 70,000 ft in the air, far above the altitudes that the Soviet radar and jets could reach, over Russia. 

NASA’s creation opens a new chapter in the Space Race. Now there are new stakes, new priorities and new aims. From the bitter and paranoid years of the arms race, a more good-natured competition arises with exploration as the purported aim of the development of space technology.

On 2nd January 1959, Luna I is launched. The aim is for the craft to make contact with the Moon and deposit on its surface two pennants bearing the hammer and sickle, the international symbol of communism. It is equipped with an array of sensors intended to measure the pressure both inside and outside the spacecraft, the radiation of cosmic rays, and the magnetic fields of both the Earth and the Moon.

Luna I launched, reaching speeds of over 25,000 miles per hour. As it nears its target, its guidance system fails, and it passes by, missing the Moon by over 3,725 miles (5,995 km). Still, it is fast and powerful enough to break free of Earth’s orbit, and it flies through open space before being caught by the gravity of the Sun, and pulled into a heliocentric orbit, where it still is today.

The project is, on paper, a failure, but at the same time, a resounding success, becoming the first object from our planet to escape Earth’s gravity. Soviet propagandists immediately get to work. The project is quickly given the nickname ‘Mechta’, meaning ‘dream’ in Russian, and they begin to refer to Luna I as the world’s first ‘Cosmic Ship’. And so, the world sees it, communism has produced the first spaceship, seven years before the USS Enterprise is launched on American television screens.

Eight months later, Luna II is launched with the same aim. This is actually the sixth Soviet probe aimed at making contact with the Moon; the four failed attempts preceding Luna I are kept as a state secret. Sixth time’s a charm, and Luna II successfully reaches the surface of the Moon. 

Then Luna III is launched. This craft is tasked with orbiting the Moon itself and collecting photographs of the dark side of the Moon, the side of the satellite that always faces away from the Earth. The success of this mission means that for the first time, humans see the other side of our Earth’s satellite. The Soviets, on grainy but still detailed black and white film, manage to photograph around 70% of the dark side of the Moon’s surface.

Throughout history, humans have wondered about the Moon. The Sumerians believed it was the god Nanna, father of the Sun. To the ancient Greeks, it was the chariot of the goddess Selene, and its perfect silver light came from the shining pelts of her two snow white horses. And, even as the Soviets brushed our satellite with their fingertips, many people across the world believed that the Moon was the cause of madness, or told stories about its strange ethereal light transforming men into wolves. Now, for the first time in human history, its secrets are almost within reach.

Det går fort med stegen i Space Exploration, och idag kom det ytterligare två vykort, eftersom jag passerat 40% av den totala sträckan.

In 1956, Khrushchev convenes all the most important members of the CPSU and delivers his Secret Speech. In it, he reveals the true extent of Stalin’s crimes: the executions of thousands, the deportation of entire ethnic groups to forced labour camps, the tortures and the forced confessions. He accuses the Stalinists of fostering a cult of personality around their leader, of crimes against humanity, of stifling culture and of betraying the ideals of Marx and Lenin that founded their state. Khrushchev promises destalinisation, the relaxation of censorship and state repression, the release of political prisoners and the return of deported populations. 

The USSR enters a new era, but the rivalries with the USA remain unchanged. The second Red Scare has gripped America, and Senator McCarthy presides over a witchhunt that imprisons and humiliates anyone even suspected of communist sympathies.

In 1953, General Dwight D. Eisenhower becomes president. Eisenhower enters the White House as the colonies of the old Imperial powers of France, Britain, Portugal, and the Netherlands begin to win independence. In these poor and exploited nations, communists and economic nationalists argue that natural resources should be owned by the state and kept out of the hands of foreign corporations. Under the aegis of the Dulles brothers, the CIA grows from a small government department employing just a few hundred people to a huge network of intelligence operatives with a single aim beyond national security: to contain the spread of communism.  Following the Truman Doctrine, the bigwigs in the State Department believe that, if left unchecked, a communist revolution in one nation will, domino-like, spark more and more revolutions across the world.

In the new postcolonial states, if the CIA gets even a whiff of a country turning communist, the Cold War often turns hot. The USA’s doctrine of containment will bring war, coups, atrocities and dictatorships to Indonesia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Guatemala, Cuba, Iran, Nicaragua, and many, many others.

However, the US also wishes to combat communism through soft power, by winning hearts and minds, and so it aims to use its advancements in the Space Race to demonstrate the superiority of capitalism to the postcolonial world and to prevent them from turning to the Soviet Union and left-wing ideals.

Without Stalinist repression, Krushchev needs a new way to keep the people of the Soviet Union onside and to direct their attention away from the great wealth and high standards of living that capitalism is producing in the West. The Soviet state provides healthcare, education, energy, leisure time and basic food free of charge or at heavily subsidised rates, but everyday comforts are practically unheard of. They have few refrigerators, washing machines, or Levi Jeans; food is still rationed and of poor quality, as is housing, and it takes years of waiting to be provided with an apartment or a car. Worse, Krushchev’s Virgin Lands programme, intended to cultivate the vast Central Asian steppe, has ended in ecological, economic and humanitarian disaster, throwing into question the efficacy of a centrally planned command economy. Finally, political repression puts limits on self-expression and free thought. Despite destalinisation, those in the USSR who stray too far from the party line still find themselves in the frozen prisons of Siberia, or in exile abroad.

The Soviet people, and those in the Global South who are deciding the direction of their new nations, need a real reason to believe in communism. The Soviets believe that one can be found in the ability of the USSR to match its much wealthier rival in technological advancement. In addition to its role as a military deterrent to the USA, the Soviet Rocket Programme becomes a way for Soviet citizens to feel proud of their society, to deflect niggling doubts about Soviet-style socialism’s workability and to demonstrate once and for all to the world that Soviet-style communism is the superior system.

Eisenhower has no wish to provoke an all-out war with the Soviet Union, but his foreign policy aims to isolate and threaten it. He instructs the military to focus on the nuclear deterrent, building a huge stockpile of the weapons. Khrushchev, for his part, preaches ‘peaceful co-existence’, whilst at the same time ordering the expansion of the Soviet Missile Programme in the hopes of creating a missile that can strike the heartlands of the United States.

Sergei Korolev has been hard at work. Not only is his project top secret, but so is his name; the identity of the head of the Soviet Space Program will be a mystery until the end of the Cold War. One Winter’s day in the mid-1950s, he invites the high-ups of the Soviet Praesidium to his hidden laboratory to show them something that will change the balance of power. Korolev and his chief rocket engineer, Valentin Glushko, have developed the prototype for the R-7 Semyorka, the world’s first intercontinental ballistic Missile (ICBM), capable of carrying a nuclear-tipped warhead over 7400 miles (12,000 km), putting the continental United States well within range. It is not until 1957 that the prototype is successfully tested, but it’s worth the wait. Now, with the push of a button, the USSR has the power to send a missile to the US in minutes. Additionally, the Soviets can also counter the huge fleet of bombers that the USA possess using missiles, which are far, far cheaper, changing the goalposts in the arms race and mitigating Soviet material disadvantages.

In the sense that both nations now have the means to destroy their rival just as easily as the other, this technological achievement means that the USSR has equal nuclear capabilities with the US. Most important for our story, however, is that the rocket also allows the transportation heavy objects into outer space. Though this feature is intended at first to carry a nuclear warhead, soon, other possibilities arise, opening up the potential for the Soviets to do things only dreamt of in science fiction – sending an artificial satellite into Earth’s orbit, or even, a terrestrial being to the stars. 

Both the United States and the Soviet Union participate, marking the end of over a decade of scientific secrecy between the two nations. Now, to celebrate the IGY, Soviet and American scientists come together to compare and display scientific advances in a variety of fields.

The United States announces Project Vanguard: it will send an artificial satellite to space within three years, joining the lonely Moon as the only other permanent object in Earth’s orbit. Rather predictably, the Soviets make a similar announcement a few weeks later. The race is on.

The US are still unaware of the R-7, which has provided the Soviets with a huge headstart. The Soviets, on the other hand, are unaware of the early U-2 spy planes that the Americans fly over their country, and intelligence starts to come in: the Soviets are training about three times as many rocket scientists per year as the USA. But the American high command is not yet nervous; they have the bulk of the German rocket technology, the expertise of the Operation Paperclip scientists, and far, far more money.

In New Mexico, work begins on Project Vanguard. But progress is slow, and failed launch follows failed launch. Unlike the Soviets, who perform their rocket tests in secrecy, the Americans choose to let journalists and photographers attend launches. But this relative openness backfires as the press begins mocking von Braun and his colleagues’ persistent failures, dubbing them ‘flopniks’ and criticising them for wasting taxpayer dollars.

Then, on October 4th, 1957, the Soviets claim a surprise first victory in the Space Race. Using Korolev’s R-7 ICBM, a gleaming chrome sphere is launched into low orbit. This is Sputnik I (Sputnik meaning ‘satellite’ in Russian). It orbits Earth for three months, sending a radio signal back to a receiver in Moscow and then runs out of battery before plummeting to Earth, burning up in the atmosphere.

Then, another blow to the USA in the race. Just a few months after their launch of Sputnik I, the Soviets send a stray dog picked up from the streets of Moscow into space. Laika, as she was named, became the first being in world history to transcend the terrestrial realm. Poor Laika was never intended to survive her journey as the technology to bring the shuttle back did not exist, but she proved to Soviet scientists that animals could theoretically survive in the zero-gravity, high-radiation environment of space. Suddenly, a new frontier is opened up that seems to stretch the human imagination, perhaps leading it beyond narrow military concerns: Is human space travel possible?  

The result is panic, and the Sputnik Crisis begins in the American Press and politics. Reports come in of the rocket’s power. The satellite the Americans were hoping to launch weighs around 22 pounds (9.8 kg), yet Sputnik I comes in at a hefty 184lb (83 kg). Calculations are made: American rockets at the time were capable of producing about 150,000 pounds-force of thrust, but to launch something as heavy as Sputnik I, engineers would need almost 1,000,000 pounds-force. Even worse, Sputnik’s launch proves the power of the R-7 rocket. There is no denying it anymore: if the Soviets can send a satellite into space, they can send a missile. If they can send a missile into space, then they can send one to the USA.

With the launch of Sputnik, the Soviets win a huge propaganda victory, proving to the whole world that the American homeland is vulnerable to a nuclear strike and showing that the ingenuity, intelligence, and talent produced by their political system are a match for the Americans. Eisenhower attempts to downplay the implications of the launch, but his nation is far further behind than it thought. The USA wakes up to a new reality –  the vast Atlantic and Pacific oceans no longer offer them protection from Soviet weapons.

Ett nytt träd planterades då jag passerat 20% av den totala sträckan i The Conqueror Events Challenge Space Race – Space Exploration.

Samtidigt, fick jag även det tredje och fjärde vykortet.

Central to Soviet philosophy is historical materialism. This theory, first put forward by the philosopher Karl Marx, posits that power rests in the ownership of the means of production (that which produces goods: land, factories, tools, etc) and that history moves forward in stages, propelled by class struggle as those who lack access to the means of production to redistribute them. The Soviets point to how merchants of the cities replaced the Medieval nobility as the rulers of the world, creating liberalism, democracy, capitalism and the urban working class. Now that the revolution is won, and the means of production are in their hands, the working class will replace the capitalists.

The Soviets aim to abolish private property (wealth and materials used to invest in business ventures to create more wealth, not personal property such as cars, clothes, toothbrushes, etc), and to manage workplaces and the economy democratically (though in practice, the Soviet system favours top-down, relatively undemocratic central planning). The state announces its international mission to create a new human culture that is equal, free from oppression, class distinctions, and economic exploitation, where work and wealth are apportioned according to the basic principle of from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs.

But the reality is not so utopian. Almost as soon as the Bolshevik Revolution triumphs, a bitter civil war begins. Those who support the old monarchy fight the revolutionaries. Western powers, including the USA, the British and the French, who are worried about their own workers’ revolutionary desires, invade the fledgling state. The Tsarists and the invaders are driven out, but in 1924, Lenin dies, and Joseph Stalin begins to consolidate his grip on power, which will result in a brutal dictatorship. Ideological enemies are purged in mass executions, millions are exiled to frozen labour camps in Russia’s arctic north, and Ukraine is plunged into a horrific famine.

Stalin rules over the USSR as an even more grotesque criminal begins to dominate Europe. Adolf Hitler’s Nazis invade the Soviet Union in 1941, besiege its second city, Leningrad, devastate the countryside and waste cities.

The USSR allies with the Americans and the British, and, after winning the Battle of Stalingrad in 1943, pushes the Germans back, entering Berlin in April 1945. The Soviet people have played the biggest role in defeating the Nazis, and they also suffered the most. Soviets and Americans both have bled for peace, but now their leaders set the stage for a new conflict. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, President of the USA and architect of the New Deal, is replaced by Harry S. Truman, a fervent anti-communist. He sees the Soviet Union as a threat to world peace and American dominance, and believes that the Soviets wish to spread totalitarian communism around the world and subvert liberal democracy. 

The Soviets confirm these fears. They install communist governments in all the nations they have liberated from the Nazis, with little attention paid to the wishes of their citizens. East Germany, Poland, Romania, and many others are turned into client states. Visiting the US in 1946, Winston Churchill states that “an iron curtain has descended across the Continent”, on one side, the free democratic West, and on the other, the communist East, separate and irreconcilable. In 1946,  the Long Telegram is sent from a US diplomat in Moscow to Truman, accusing Stalin of attempting to enslave Europe and spread communism across the world. 

The USA responds forcefully, though it is still unclear if Stalin has any designs on world domination whatsoever. The CIA uses covert tactics and voter suppression to successfully undermine communist movements in Italy and France who are about to be democratically elected, they support the far-right dictatorship in Greece in its civil war against communist revolutionaries, and they allow many high-ranking members of the Nazi party to remain in office, closing off control of Western Germany to the left and allowing war criminals to escape justice. Finally, they initiate the Marshall Plan, a massive program of financial aid to help rebuild Western European countries, on the understanding that they remain within the American sphere of influence.

A climate of fear grips the Soviet Union. In 1949, the USA flies three B-29 Superfortresses (the same craft used to drop nuclear bombs on Japan) in tight battle formation deep into Soviet airspace, their undersides painted white to reflect the light from a nuclear explosion. For a moment, the Soviets expect annihilation, but the bombers turn round, satisfied in their demonstration of power.

The Soviet Union must level the playing field. In 1949, they complete their first successful test of a nuclear bomb. In occupied Germany, they race to steal as much machinery and schematics as they can. In Mittlewerk, at first they find nothing, but then, in a vault missed by the Americans, they find V-2 schematics, and even materials for a more advanced rocket, one that could travel across the Atlantic.

Enter Sergei Korolev. Famous for his work on early Soviet cruise missiles, he fell foul of Stalin and has spent the last six years in labour camps and prisons. Now, traumatised and emaciated, he has been plucked out, given his freedom, and placed in control of the Soviet Rocket programme. His task – work backwards through the bewildering mess of the Nazi schematics and build a rocket that can enter space and drop a nuclear-tipped warhead on the continental United States. 

Stalin believes that once this is achieved, the USSR will be safe. A nuclear attack on one nation will result in a retaliatory nuclear strike, and the world will end. The price is simply too high for one nation to attack first. This is Mutually Assured Destruction – the twisted, dangerous logic that underpins the new Cold War. After the Soviets make their first successful test of a nuclear bomb in 1949,  the two superpowers cannot fight each other directly. Instead, the battle will be fought in the realm of culture, scientific development, and in the anticolonial struggles of the global South, which is now emerging free from European colonialism and looking for an ideological path to a better future. The arms race grows out of this conflict, and following it, so does the Space Race.

Det går framåt i Gabriels och min utmaning mot stjärnorna.

Idag fick jag ett nytt vykort.

In the clement beach town of Yalta in the Crimea, the victors meet. Franklin D. Roosevelt, the USA’s president, Joseph Stalin, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the USSR, and Winston Churchill, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, prepare to set the contours of the post-war world. The Nazi Empire is divided into spheres of influence; the east of Europe, and the east of Germany is largely left in the hands of the Soviets, whilst the West comes under American influence.

In February 1945, months before the Western Allied forces enter Germany, a special task force is set up by US Army Intelligence. This is T-section, which will later become Operation Paperclip, tasked with gathering Nazi technology and scientists, especially those with a hand in the V-2 rocket design. 

In April 1945, US forces enter the German provinces of Thuringia and Saxony, in the east of the country. The Americans know that, as per the Yalta agreement, this area will soon have to be turned over to the Soviets. However, the provinces are renowned for their wealth of factories, laboratories, and missile launch sites. With the clock ticking, the Americans work to lift as much technology and as many German scientists as possible before the deadline. Operation Paperclip begins.

The Mittelwerk Factory in Nordhausen, central Germany, is a prime target. Though in the Soviet zone, American troops arrive first. Here they find a massive underground factory building jet engines, V-1 buzz bombs, and V-2 ballistic missiles. The Americans take everything, every blueprint, spare part and engineer. 

Nordhausen is not a normal factory. It is buried deep underground and is a vast network of tunnels and vaults. Slaves do all labour here; those caught up in the Nazi holocaust. Jews, Roma, communists and other so-called ‘deviants’ are forced to work in horrifying conditions until they die from injury, overwork or starvation. The Americans who liberate the labour camp are appalled, a report commissioned after the site’s discovery states, “this factory is the epitome of megalomaniac production and robot efficiency and layout. Everything was ruthlessly executed with utter disregard for humanitarian considerations. The record of Nordhausen is a most unenviable one, and we were told that 250 of the slave workers perished every day”. Still, their moral outrage does not stop them from spiriting the site’s managers, members of the high Nazi command, and engineers to the USA, and away from justice. 

The greatest prize is found not in the industrial heartlands of the Reich, but in the pristine snowy Alps of southern Bavaria. Wernher von Braun, engineering genius, designer of the V-2 rocket, Nazi Party member and participant in the crimes of the holocaust, flees here. He is running from both his former comrades in the SS, who have been tasked with his execution, and the advancing tide of the Red Army, whom he believes will indict him for his work at Mittelbau-Dora, the concentration camp which provided the slave labour required to construct the rocket. In May 1945, he and a team of important engineers surrender themselves to a unit of American soldiers, and in a matter of weeks, he is on an aeroplane headed for Fort Bliss, Texas.

In the end, three hundred rail-car loads of V-2s and their components are captured and shipped to the United States, and 126 of their principal designers, including Wernher von Braun, travel to America to help the US understand the technology. The Soviets arrive in Nordhausen to find the factory almost totally picked clean. With Von Braun, his team of engineers and all the schematics and blueprints of the Nazi Rocket Programme in their hands, the USA begins to take the lead in the race.