Spellbreakers Ep. 170: First in Space - A History of the German Space Program, Part I - The Early Years

Badlands Media · Jun 13, 2026 · 1h 19m

Forget the "well, actually" crowd. Yes, the Germans were central to the space race, and host Matt Trump is leaning all the way into it. In Part I of this new series, Matt traces humanity's first object to ever cross into outer space back to a test launch from Peenemunde on June 20, 1944, two weeks after D-Day, and the weapon it became, the V2. But the real story starts decades earlier with Jules Verne, whose 1865 novel "From the Earth to the Moon" predicted Apollo and Artemis with eerie accuracy, and inspired a young Transylvanian Saxon named Hermann Oberth to turn science fiction into the…