The history of technology is replete with descriptions of the development of various types of vehicle the steam locomotive, the motor car, the aircraft all designed to transport passengers, goods or other cargo from one point to another. Well before rocketry was an accepted branch of engineering, successive generations of engineers had succeeded in developing transport systems that spanned the globe on land, on sea and in the air. It was therefore only a matter of time before they set their sights a little higher, towards space. Indeed, as the previous chapter has shown, in the minds of certain far-sighted individuals, space was just another destination in need of a transport system.