Can you imagine a time when people thought spaceflight impossible–or at least, unlikely?

Just over seventy years ago, three teams of visionaries embarked on a major challenge: to prove that perception wrong.

Their stories are the subject of the book The First Space Race: Launching the World’s First Satellites.

Author, science writer, historian and naturalist Matt Bille, who co-wrote The First Space Race with Erika Lishock, takes readers behind the scenes of the dawn of the space age in the 1950s.

The First Space Race shares the stories behind the facts of the innovators, on both the Russian and U.S. teams, who put the world’s first satellites into orbit.

Mapping out the future

Interestingly, many of today’s space science concepts were part of the vision back then.

Readers get to meet Russian Chief Designer Sergey Korolev, who helmed the launch of Sputnik I, and who predicted, in 1946, that, “in about 30 years, a human will be on the moon.” And, on the U.S. side, The First Space Race offers a look at the brilliant and diplomatic Werner von Braun, who envisioned ultimately sending humans to Mars

The book also takes an unflinching look at the missteps and foibles along the way, and the lessons learned from them.

Matt shared the story of writing The First Space Race, offered a closer look at what was happening, in both the U.S. and the USSR as teams raced to get the first satellites into space, and discussed the ways those early satellites paved the ways for some of our twenty-first century technology.

On this edition of Over Coffee® we cover:

• How Matt first became interested in space travel and space science;

• His memories of a historic launch;

• How The First Space Race came about, as a book project;

• What was happening, in relation to satellite innovation, just after World War II;

• How Werner von Braun came to the U.S.;

• Why American rocket scientists took so long to launch a satellite;

• A closer look at Sergei Korolyov, the Russian counterpart to von Braun;

• Repercussions in the U.S., after the USSR’s successful launch of Sputnik;

• A closer look at Explorer I and the tasks it accomplished;

• The competition between the U.S. Army and Navy, to launch satellites;

• A near-humorous response to an early failure;

• What each country was doing, towards lunar exploration, after both the U.S. and the USSR had successfully launched satellites;

• Some of the “good mistakes” of the Vanguard program, that led to learning;

• How the descendants of those early satellites are in use today;

• What gave Matt a sense of awe and wonder, during the process of researching and writing The First Space Race;

• A closer look at Matt’s other books, and a preview of his new one, scheduled for release in February 2027;

• Matt’s advice to fellow writers.