**75 Years Ago: First Launch of a Two-Stage Rocket**
Today, multi-stage rockets regularly launch satellites into orbit, dispatch spacecraft to other worlds, and deliver crews to space stations. The first two-stage liquid-fueled rocket launch predated the Space Age by nearly a decade, taking place on May 13, 1948, at the White Sands Proving Ground (WSPG) in New Mexico. Combining German and American technology, the Bumper program put together a captured V-2 rocket as a booster with a WAC Corporal sounding rocket as an upper stage. The two-stage Bumper rockets reached altitudes never attained before, returning scientific information from that extreme environment. Although the WSPG, renamed the White Sands Missile Range on April 29, 1958, has remained active, the U.S. government transferred the Bumper program to a new site under development in Cape Canaveral, Florida, for its final two launches in 1950.
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[https://www.nasa.gov/feature/75-years-ago-first-launch-of-a-two-stage-rocket](https://www.nasa.gov/feature/75-years-ago-first-launch-of-a-two-stage-rocket)
**75 Years Ago: First Launch of a Two-Stage Rocket**
Today, multi-stage rockets regularly launch satellites into orbit, dispatch spacecraft to other worlds, and deliver crews to space stations. The first two-stage liquid-fueled rocket launch predated the Space Age by nearly a decade, taking place on May 13, 1948, at the White Sands Proving Ground (WSPG) in New Mexico. Combining German and American technology, the Bumper program put together a captured V-2 rocket as a booster with a WAC Corporal sounding rocket as an upper stage. The two-stage Bumper rockets reached altitudes never attained before, returning scientific information from that extreme environment. Although the WSPG, renamed the White Sands Missile Range on April 29, 1958, has remained active, the U.S. government transferred the Bumper program to a new site under development in Cape Canaveral, Florida, for its final two launches in 1950.
So many white guys.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip
i thought that was my reddit profile banner
So… ummm….. were these the “good” Nazis?
No. Just something I notice these days.
Can’t let the Soviets get their hands on German engineers and scientists.
The paper-clippers. No 6 in the first row from right seems to be von Braun
Who is the guy in the bottom row, second from the right?
That mf still has that moustache 💀
Ah yes, the German engineer lotto.
US sure had good luck pulling Wernher von Braun.
[inb4 “how dare the US take ex-Nazi scientists instead of punishing them like the Soviets did!”](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Osoaviakhim)