The race for the Final Frontier

Book review of 'How to Make a Spaceship'

HOW TO MAKE A SPACESHIP 

A Band of Renegades, An Epic Race, And The Birth of Private Spaceflight

Julian Guthrie

Bantam Press

432 pages; Rs 699

The space race began as World War II ended. The Allies had no defence against Germany’s V2 rockets. So, the victors divided up the rocket scientists of the Third Reich, parked them on opposite sides of Iron Curtain in teams that made bigger, better rockets. 

Nuclear weapons, rockets, space race; these were all Cold War leitmotifs. Apart from demonstrating muscle, major bragging rights were associated with putting satellites and human beings into space (Sputnik, Yuri Gagarin, John Glenn) and