Rocket City USA — NASA, the Saturn V, and America's Space Capital
Huntsville is Rocket City USA — the place where Wernher von Braun and the German rocket engineers designed the Saturn V that put Apollo astronauts on the Moon, and where NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center still drives the space programme today. The US Space and Rocket Center, the world's largest space museum, holds the actual Saturn V rocket that would have launched Apollo 19. Meanwhile, a booming tech sector has transformed this former cotton city into one of America's fastest-growing metros.
Huntsville was Alabama's first incorporated city (1811) and briefly served as the state capital. Its transformation into 'Rocket City' began when Wernher von Braun and 103 German engineers arrived at Redstone Arsenal in 1950, a programme that produced the Jupiter IRBM, the Redstone rocket that launched America's first satellite (Explorer 1), and ultimately the Saturn V that carried the Apollo missions to the Moon. Marshall Space Flight Center, established 1960, still operates as NASA's lead centre for propulsion and heavy-lift vehicles.