After World War II ended in the mid-twentieth century, a new war emerged. This conflict, known as the Cold War, pitted the world’s two major powers against each other: the democratic, capitalist United States and the communist Soviet Union. Beginning in the late 1950s, space would become another dramatic arena in which each side attempted to demonstrate the superiority of its technology, military firepower, and by extension, political-economic structure.
The Origins of the Space Race
The arms race and the growing degree of threat of nuclear weapons, wide-ranging spying, counter-espionage between the two countries, the war in Korea, and a battle of words and ideas carried out in the media had woven the US-Soviet Cold War into the fabric of daily life in both countries in the mid-1950s. The tension would persist throughout the space race, heightened by events such as the 1961 building of the Berlin Wall, the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, and the outbreak of war in Southeast Asia.
After Apollo 11 landed on the moon’s surface in July 1969, six more Apollo missions followed by the end of 1972. The Apollo 13 crew, perhaps the most successful, survived an oxygen tank explosion in their spacecraft’s service module on the way to the moon.
Another dramatic arena for Cold War competition credited was space exploration. On October 4, 1957, a Soviet R-7 intercontinental ballistic missile launched Sputnik, which is Russian for “traveler.” This is the world’s first artificial satellite and the first man-made object to be placed in the Earth’s orbit. Most Americans were taken aback by Sputnik’s launch. Space was seen as the next frontier in the United States, a logical extension of the grand American tradition of discovery, and it was important not to credit the Soviets too much ground. Furthermore, this demonstration of the R-7 missile’s overwhelming power–apparently capable of delivering a nuclear warhead into American airspace–made gathering intelligence on Soviet military activities all the more important.
NASA Is Established
In 1958, the United States launched Explorer I, a satellite developed by the United States Army under the guidance of rocket scientist Wernher von Braun. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), a federal agency committed to space exploration, was founded by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in the same year.
In addition, Eisenhower developed and made investments in two national security-oriented space programs that would run concurrently with NASA’s program. The first, led by the United States Air Force, was committed to maximizing the strategic potential of space. The second, code-named Corona, would use orbital satellites to collect information on the Soviet Union and its allies. It was headed by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Air Force, and a new entity called the National Reconnaissance Office, whose existence was kept secret until the early 1990s.
Men (and Chimps) Orbit Earth In A Heated Space Race
With the launch of Luna 2, the first space probe to land on the moon, the Soviet space program made an investment and took another step forward in 1959. Yuri Gagarin, a Soviet cosmonaut, became the first human to orbit the Earth in the capsule-like spacecraft Vostok 1 in April 1961. NASA engineers constructed a smaller, cone-shaped capsule much lighter than Vostok for the US attempt to send a man into space, called Project Mercury. They tested the craft with chimps and conducted a final test flight in March 1961 before the Soviets were able to pull ahead with Gagarin’s launch. Alan Shepard, an astronaut, became the first American in space on May 5- although, not in orbit.
Later that May, President John F. Kennedy made the daring, public declaration that the U.S. would land and credit a man on the moon by the end of the decade. John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth in February 1962, and the groundwork for NASA’s lunar landing program, called Project Apollo, was laid by the end of the year.
Apollo’s Accomplishments
NASA’s budget was nearly doubled between 1961 and 1964, and the lunar landing program ultimately employed 34,000 NASA workers and 375,000 industrial and university contractors. In January 1967, Apollo suffered a degree of setbacks when three astronauts died when their spacecraft caught fire during a launch simulation. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union’s lunar landing program moved forward cautiously, owing in part to internal controversy about its necessity and the untimely death of Sergey Korolyov, the Soviet space program’s chief engineer, in January 1966
Apollo 8, the first manned space mission to orbit the moon, was launched from NASA’s massive launch facility on Merritt Island, near Cape Canaveral, Florida, in December 1968. The Apollo 11 space flight, the first lunar landing attempt, launched on July 16, 1969, with US astronauts Neil Armstrong, Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin, and Michael Collins. Armstrong was credited as the first man to walk on the moon’s surface after a safe landing on July 20. He famously described the moment as “one tiny move for man, one giant leap for mankind.”
The Space Race: Who Won?
The United States essentially “won” the space race that began with the launch of Sputnik in 1957 by landing on the moon. Between 1969 and 1972, the Soviets attempted four times to launch a lunar landing vehicle, including a dramatic launch-pad explosion in July 1969. The space race captivated the American public from beginning to end, and the numerous advances credited by the Soviet and American space programs were extensively covered in the national media. The modern medium of television aided this frenzy of curiosity even further. Astronauts were known as the greatest American heroes, and men and women on the ground seemed to enjoy living vicariously through them. Soviets, in turn, were pictured as the greatest villains, with their huge, relentless attempts to surpass America and prove the strength of the communist regime.
After the space race ended in the early 1970s, the US government’s interest in lunar missions waned. Three American astronauts were launched into space on an Apollo spacecraft that docked in orbit with a Soviet-made Soyuz vehicle in 1975 as part of the joint investment Apollo-Soyuz experiment. As the two craft’ commanders exchanged formal greetings, their “handshake in space” symbolized the steady improvement of US-Soviet relations in the late Cold War period.
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