On October 4, 1957, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) launched a rocket that inserted a small satellite into orbit around Earth. Three months later, on January 31, 1958, the United States launched a satellite into a higher Earth orbit. Most historians consider these two events as denoting the beginning of the space age. This new age historically marked the first time that humans had been able to send objects—and, later, themselves—into outer space, that is, the region beyond the detectable atmosphere. The flight of machines into and through space, while a product of mid-twentieth-century technology, was a dream held by scientists, engineers, political leaders, and visionaries for many centuries before the means existed to convert these ideas into reality. And while the USSR and United States first created the enabling space technologies, the ideas that shaped these machines spanned other continents and the peoples...