After winning a scholarship to Massachusetts Institute of Technology under the Belgian American Educational Foundation to study aeronautical engineering, he remained in the United States, working for various aircraft companies.

The Air Force was skeptical of Bossart's proposal, partly wishing to preserve the priority of strategic bombers, but granted him a limited contract to develop a prototype.

Bossart's major innovation was the use of a monocoque design in which structural support was maintained by pressure within the inelastic fuel tanks.

In 1955 the Central Intelligence Agency reported that Soviet Russia had made swift progress on its own intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) programme and Atlas became a crash project of the highest national importance.

However, used as a launch vehicle, the Atlas design has excelled and has formed the basis of the most successful and reliable expendable rockets in service.