| The Space Age might also be considered to have begun much earlier than October 4, 1957, because on October 3, 1942, a German A4 rocket, a prototype version of the V-2 rocket program, reached space. It thus became the first man-made object to enter space, albeit only briefly. Since this flight was undertaken in secrecy, it was not public knowledge for many years afterwards. Further, the German launch, as well as the subsequent sounding rocket tests performed in both the United States and the Soviet Union during the late 1940s and early 1950s, were not considered significant enough to start a new age because they did not reach orbit. Having a rocket powerful enough to reach orbit meant that a nation had the ability to place a payload anywhere on the planet, or to use another term, possessed an inter-continental ballistic missile. The fact that after such a development nowhere on the planet was safe from a nuclear warhead is why the orbit standard is used to define when the space age started.[3] |
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