America's First Rocket Company: Reaction Motors, Inc. (Library of Flight)

America's First Rocket Company is the story of Reaction Motors, Inc. (RMI), the U.S.'s first liquid-propellant rocket company. Founded in December, 1941 following the bombing of Pearl Harbor, with the single-minded goal of developing the liquid-propellant rocket for the war effort, RMI was an ambitious undertaking at a time when rocket propulsion technology was in its infancy. RMI went on to accomplish some of the most significant technological breakthroughs in American aerospace history, paving the way to manned flights far beyond the speed of sound, the beginnings of manned flight into space, and development of the critically important vernier motors for the Surveyor spacecraft that became the U.S.'s first soft-landing craft on the surface of the Moon. Read more