Quote:
Originally Posted by jamesqf
Chinese &c rockets were all solid fuel, not useful for much beyond fireworks and short-range military weapons. By similar logic, you could just as well claim that squid are responsible for rocket engines :-)
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NASA still uses solid rockets and the space shuttle would never have left the ground without its solid rocket boosters!
Quote:
Originally Posted by jamesqf
Had you bothered to read a bit further in that article, you would have found that von Braun became a US citizen in 1955.
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So the USA imported most of the knowledge, expertise and experience used to make the Saturn V rockets and more or less stole many V2 rockets which it then carried out experiments and test flights with - the USA started with something that was already in mass production and proven to fly reliably. That obviously had a huge impact on the costs required while the country that paid for the development of the V2 went bankrupt, partly because of the cost of the V2 rocket.