It took about a decade of work to go from the first suborbital rockets to orbit, and even that was in the context of a competitive arms race. It actually took m

It took about a decade of work to go from the first suborbital rockets to orbit, and even that was in the context of a competitive arms race. It actually took more than a decade but it’s not completely fair to count all of that time since there wasn’t a continuous effort between the V-2 and the US and Soviet rocket programs.