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Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) was carved from the environs of Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama, at the height of the Cold War with the former Soviet Union. Originally, the area was a center for cotton production and large mills, but on the eve of World War II, civic leaders sought a US Army initiative that established Redstone and Huntsville Arsenals for the manufacture and stockpile of small solid-fuel rockets and chemical weapons. After World War II, Operation Paperclip brought scientists and engineers from Germany to pursue missile and rocket development at Redstone Arsenal's Army Ballistic Missile Agency (ABMA) and eventually the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). After establishing the civilian NASA on July 29, 1958, Pres. Dwight D. Eisenhower dedicated the George C. Marshall Space Flight Center on September 8, 1960, to the resolute general, statesman, and "builder of peace." The president concluded, "May this great center be ever worthy of its honored name." Following the Mercury and Apollo programs of the 1960s and early 1970s, MSFC's notable achievements continued with Skylab, Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, Space Shuttle, Spacelab, and the space station. Today, Marshall Space Flight Center, NASA's leading center for propulsion systems and launch vehicles, supports the lunar missions of Project Artemis.

In the first comprehensive photographic account of the Saturn V, relive the drama of the Space Race through the production of the rocket that would carry Neil Armstrong and crew to the moon.

In 1961, Pres. John F. Kennedy set the challenge of landing a man on the moon by the end of the decade. In order to achieve this, NASA partnered with US industry to build the largest rocket ever produced, the Saturn V. It was designed and tested in record time and made its first flight in 1967. Less than two years later and within the timescales set by the president, the crew of Apollo 11 was launched on a Saturn V and watched live by millions of people on televisions around the world. From this launch, Neil Armstrong made his famous giant leap for mankind, later to be followed by 11 other astronauts who also walked on the moon.

Join author and Huntsville native T. Gary Wicks as he uncovers the beginnings and inventions that influenced air and space engineering in Alabama and America.

The air age in Huntsville began more than a century ago with Will Quick's design and construction of a flying machine, which he demonstrated in 1908 for patenting and manufacture. The space age began in Huntsville a half century later with the advent of Wernher Von Braun's Redstone Jupiter C rocket, which launched America's first satellite, Explorer 1, into orbit in 1958. A decade later, Huntsville was at the epicenter of the greatest technological achievement of the 20th century as the Saturn V rocket propelled humankind to the moon. Nowhere in the world is the century's rapid advance of air and space technology more apparent than in Huntsville. This unique evolution of flying machines and space vehicles unfolds in this pictorial documentary, including the dramatic growth of the research facilities and community infrastructure that produced these remarkable inventions.