Breaking the Chains of Gravity: The Story of Spaceflight before NASA
© 2016 Amy Shira Teitel
304 pages

You know the story. The scene: 1950s America. Everyone is drinking on the back patio in suburbia, dressed in cardigans or pearls and pastel dresses, and admiring the latest model of a fin-tailed sedan, reflected in their “I LIKE IKE” pins. Then, from the skies, that sinister noise — beep, beep beep — and suddenly the peace of postwar America is broken by the realization that those nasty Ruskies are up to something, and money must be thrown at hosts of bespeckled young men wearing thick glasses and pocket protectors so that the moon doesn’t become the next Siberia! Well — stuff and nonsense, says Amy Shira Teitel. Not only have men and women been looking toward the stars with an aim to travel there since the 19th century, but the United States had been steadily pursuing rocketry and the possibility of space aviation since the close of World War 2. Breaking the Chains of Gravity, a second history of early aviation and the space age from Ms. Teitel, is a fascinating look into the history of rocketry and jet aircraft that would later join together in NASA. It’s a lite-technical history written for a popular audience.

Although Jules Verne and H.G. Wells were both scribbling about space travel prior to World War 2, rocketry really begins there — or shortly before, when Germany needed ways to maintain military readiness without running afoul of the vengeful Versailles treaty, which imposed strict limits on how many men in arms and equipment it could maintain. Rockets, which had the potential to be long-term artillery, weren’t thoroughly accounted for by the treaty: after all, though they’d been used in the Napoleonic wars, they hadn’t had demonstrated any real punch beyond amusement and racket. That would change as brilliant minds like Werner von Braun, who was interested in rockets as a means of opening a new frontier in space, were put to work. As is well known by this point, Germany was able to create a series of rockets that could carry explosives beyond its borders, at speeds and with stealth impossible for its bombers — not that it had many of those left by the time the V2 became operational. von Braun was no political idiot, and as the war’s resolution became clear, he looked for an opportunity to transfer his equipment, knowledge, and dreams elsewhere. The Brits, having experienced von Braun’s passion in an intimate and painful way, were not a viable option — nor were the Soviets, being as dangerous and maniacal as von Braun’s Nazi paymasters. The Amis it was, then, and von Braun was able to sneak his people and tools through SS sentryposts, evading capture by them and the advancing Russians and find a resort to hole up in and wait to be captured by Americans. From there, via Operation Paperclip and the like, American forces began experimenting with the remaining V2s in New Mexico, developing familarity with the technology. At the same time, though, men like Chuck Yeager were also pushing the envelope with jet airplanes, breaking not only the sound barrier but coming to the threshhold of space itself. The US military agencies were actively interested in how the human body could cope with hide altitudes, creating projects like Project Manhigh to float a man at the atmosphere’s edge for close to twenty hours. The launch of Sputnik added urgency to the space and satellite goals of Eisenhower and the defense establishment, but despite that Eisenhower was insistent on advancing space exploration through a civilian, not a military agency.

Breaking the Chains of Gravity is a thoroughly valuable book for those at all interested in the development of rocketry and the arduous task of figuring out aviation in the heights of the upper atmosphere and beyond. I was reminded in part of The Right Stuff, given Wolfe’s early focus on the men of Edwards (here known as Muroc Field). Breaking the Chains is a solid argument that the space race was one of a Russian surprise and ambush, but more of a steady progression that merely had a shot in the arm in the wake of Russia’s public entry into the age of space.

Related:
Into the Black: The Extraordinary Untold Story of the First Flight of Columbia, Rowland White. Heavy history of space aviation that overlaps with this somewhat, in covering military interest in space.
Fighting for Space, Amy Shira Teitel. The story of two extraordinary female pilots and their hopes to include women in the Mercury program
Dreamland: Inside the Secret World of Roswell and Area 51, Phil Patton. A curious mix of legitimate experimental aviation history and paranormal lore.