Traveling to the Moon and the planets beyond has moved from the world of dreamers and Buck Rogers to the factual terrain of the daily papers and television news shows. This book tells the story of the men who did so much to make the impossible a reality. From a small group of amateur rocketeers led by Wernher von Braun, his rocket team grew into one of the most influential technological forces in this or any other century. Starting in the early 1930's with rockets whose flights were measured in feet (when they got off the ground at all), within two dozen years the von Braun team added a new dimension to warfare with the 200-mile-range V-2 bombardment missile. After World War II, the same team created the first long-range ballistic missiles for the U.S.: They worked on the Explorer program that resulted in the first American satellite to orbit the Earth. And within the decade they developed and built the huge 363-foot-tall Saturn rocket that fulfilled von Braun's life-long dream of sending man to the Moon. The Rocket Team discloses much previously classified information, particularly involving the British intelligence effort to learn about Hitler's heralded V1 and V2 "vengeance weapons"; to delay their going into action and to minimize their effectiveness once they were developed. The U.S. and British documents, as well as information from von Braun himself, his papers, and interviews with the other members of his team, provide new insights into the wartime growth of rocketry. For Germany, the effort was remarkable: the V-2 program costing some $3 billion - half again as much as the American Manhattan project t develop the atomic bomb. The conditions under which the team had to operate were severe. Constant Allied bombings disrupted supply lines and forced manufacturing operations underground. Internally, the V-2 program was disrupted by Hitler's on-again, off-again attitude and Himmler's attempt to gain control of it. At one point von Braun himself was arrested by the SS! Despite such obstacles, the scientists and engineers on the teaam refined and developed their work to the point that, when they arranged their surrender to the Americans at the end of World War II, von Braun announced that he had a rocket on the drawing board that could fly from Germany to New York. Little wonder, then, that the rivalry was so keen between the U.S., Russia, and Britain to gain the services of the von Braun group after the war. The Rocket Team tells how the men were brought to the U.S., and established first at White Sands, N.M., and then at Huntsville, Ala., where many of the team members continue to live. Included, too is a revealing chapter on the development of postwar Soviet rocketry, based on the work of the members of the von Braun team who chose to go East instead of West. The Rocket Team is the only complete, authoritative history of the von Braun group. It is a fascinating account of how the future began - a significant contribution to the history of World War II as well as to the history of science and technology.