The Space Race was the name given to the Cold War ‘competition’ between Super-Power rivals America (the United States) and Russia/ the Soviet Union lasting roughly 1955-1972 for supremacy in the new concept of space-flight capability. Victory in the race was seen by both sides as vital both for their national security and as proof of their ideological superiority. It was the Soviets that launched the first satellite (Sputnik) into space in 1957, but the US is largely acknowledged as having ‘won’ the Space Race by landing the first man on the Moon in 1969.
The origins of the Space Race began at the end of World War 2 as the US and the USSR tried to position themselves as the world’s most powerful nation in a post-war world. Both countries engaged in a missile and rocket-based arms race and competed to seize key rocket technology and personnel from Nazi Germany at war’s end to advance this. The US managed to capture the idealistic young German scientist Wernher Von Braun who had dreams of sending rockets into space; Sergei Korolev was Von Braun’s Russian equivalent and, although they never met, the two scientists also became locked in an intense individual battle for supremacy.
Following America’s development and use of nuclear weapons in World War 2, Russia tested its first nuclear bomb in 1949. America developed intercontinental ballistic missiles that were capable of delivering nuclear weapons. Russia did likewise. Korolev, obsessed with beating Von Braun, worked tirelessly to use this new technology to launch a small satellite into space, which he did in 1957 when Sputnik 1 successfully completed an orbit around the planet.
The Russians won the next rounds of the battle, too, when they successfully launched the first animal – Laika the dog – into space on Sputnik 2, then the first human – Yuri Gagarin – into orbit around the Earth on Vostok 1 in 1961, dubbing him the first cosmonaut (“sailor of the universe”); the world celebrated Russia’s triumph. U.S. President John F. Kennedy realised he needed to do something spectacular to regain momentum and set his sights on landing a man on the Moon. In 1963, Kennedy made an idealistic speech to the United Nations proposing a combined US/USSR Moon Mission. Russian leader Nikita Khrushchev was said to be poised to accept the offer but when JFK was assassinated, the proposal never took root and the Cold War and Space Race both aggressively continued. What might have been….
Under huge pressure to maintain Russia’s lead, Korolev put the first woman in space in 1963, then the first three-person spacecraft into orbit in 1964, then had his cosmonauts conduct the first spacewalk in 1965. But the American ‘Project Gemini’ team was making its own advances: in 1965, Gemini 5 spent 8 days in space, long enough for a lunar mission, and Gemini 7 lasted 14 days. In 1966, astronaut Neil Armstrong completed the first successful space docking in Gemini 8 and Buzz Aldrin spent 5 hours in space outside Gemini 12 making repairs. America seemed to be pulling ahead, but in 1968 the Soviets circled the moon in a spacecraft containing two tortoises and brought the reptiles back alive. However, now operating without Korolev (who had tragically died in 1966), the Russian programme had lost momentum – indeed, they broadcast recordings of human voices from the tortoise rocket to trick the Americans into thinking they were further ahead than they really were. Which is both sad and awesome all at once.
America launched the first (genuinely) manned spacecraft, Apollo 8, to orbit the Moon on Christmas Eve 1968. In July 1969, Apollo 11 fittingly launched from the Kennedy Space Centre (named after J.F.K) and took astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins into orbit of the Moon, where the Eagle lunar module descended from the main craft and landed on the Moon on 20 July 1969. 500 million people around the world watched on television as Neil Armstrong become the first man to walk on the Moon. America had won the Space Race.
Unlike other aspects of the Cold War, the Space Race had a number of beneficial effects for the wider world: useful civilian spin-off technologies from the vast amounts of money spent on research (for example dried fruit, stay-dry clothing, anti-mist goggles and the micro-technology used for timekeeping and music all evolved from the Space Race). Over 1,000 satellites today orbit the Earth monitoring weather, vegetation and human movement. Following the worldwide excitement generated by the Moon landing, a much greater educational emphasis was placed on maths, science and understanding the natural universe in schools around the world.
The Space Race also produced the birth of today’s recognised Environmental Movement, spawned by the crystal clear photographs taken of Earth by the astronauts from space: the first time humans had seen their home planet as it really appears – a fragile blue world surrounded by the blackness of space.
To learn more about the growing momentum to ensure the safekeeping of our planet’s fragile environment, jump to Chapter 20: Environmental Movement
I may be shoe-horning him in slightly because I want to find out about the Peace Corps, but to learn more about the idealistic U.S President who made the Moon Mission happen, jump to Chapter 21: John F. Kennedy
To learn more about the Moon itself, jump to Chapter 22: Moon
