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Escape From Earth: A Secret History of the Space Rocket by Fraser MacDonald
Engrossing history of the US space programme's radical pioneers
Space pioneer: Frank Malina with a WAC Corporal rocket

WITH the 50th anniversary of the lunar landings being currently marked, the rocket is capturing the imagination once again.

But, as Fraser MacDonald’s book reveals, the rocket that propelled the Apollo mission to the moon had its precursors.

Escape From Earth narrates the exhilarating story of engineering prodigy Frank Malina who, at the California Institute of Technology in the 1930s, spearheaded the US’s first experiments in rocketry, climaxing with the launch of the WAC Corporal, the first US rocket to reach space in 1946.

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