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as shown The "V-2" Addition: While first published in May 1944, this January 1945 "Third Printing with Additional Material" is significant because it includes the first public technical information about the German V-2 rocket, which had begun falling on London just months earlier. It is considered one of the earliest and most influential books to present rocketry and space travel as practical science rather than science fiction to the general American public. The author of this book is Willy Ley (1906–1969), a pioneering figure who is often called the "Prophet of the Space Age". Long before the Apollo missions, he used books, articles, and television (including collaborations with Walt Disney) to convince a skeptical public that landing on the Moon was a technical reality, not just science fiction. Ley died in June 1969, just weeks before the Apollo 11 moon landing he had spent his life predicting. In his honor, a crater on the far side of the Moon was named after him