Defense &
Early Rocketry
Defense &Early Rocketry

Browse by mission, era, or program

WARFARE

Rocketry's first customers were armies. Missiles built for deterrence — Redstone, Atlas, Titan — carried megaton stakes before they ever carried science. The road to orbit runs straight through the arsenal.

BUILT STUBBORN

The Space Age wasn't born confident — it was born stubborn…

SHOP Defense & Early Rocketry COLLECTION

SHOWING 3 OUT OF 3 PRODUCTS
1946V-2s rise from White Sands
1950First launch from the Cape
1958Explorer 1 answers Sputnik

DID YOU KNOW?

Fruit Flies First

Fruit Flies First

The first living things sent to space rode a V-2 in 1947 — fruit flies, parachuted home alive before any monkey or man.

Ten-Foot Walls

Ten-Foot Walls

Early launch crews watched from concrete blockhouses just yards from the pad — some with walls ten feet thick.

Missile Row

Missile Row

By 1960 Cape Canaveral's shoreline was so crowded with launch pads that the strip earned a nickname: "Missile Row".