During WWII the United States and the Soviet Union fought together as part of the Allies against the Axis powers. Though they fought together they did not have the same beliefs and often fought over their ways of government. For example the Americans were very democratic and believed everybody had their own freedoms while the ideal of the Soviet Union was communism. After the war ended Stalin and the USSR were on their way to taking over Eastern Europe and many Americans were afraid this communist nation was planning to eventually take over the world. Thus came the Cold War, a political and military tension between NATO and the Warsaw Pact. The Cold War was roughly, according to arguing historians, from 1947-1991.
A major part of the Cold War was the Space Race, which was the competition between the United States and the USSR to be the first Nations to land on the moon. On October 4, 1957, a Soviet R-7 intercontinental ballistic missile launched Sputnik, the world’s first artificial satellite and the first man-made object to be planed into the Earth’s orbit. (history.com) Most Americans saw Sputnik as a surprise because they thought they were ahead of everyone else and were going to be clearly the first to land into the next frontier, space. Americans were and are very into expanding and thinking they are better than every other country in the world. Americans were always expanding, it is how they were discovered as a country and why they feel like they are better than every other country. In the 19th century a term for this expansion came about, Manifest Destiny, which was what Americans saw space as. Americans saw space as another opportunity for Manifest Destiny, they saw it as the final frontier.
Because of this urgency to always be better than Russia, which was what the Cold War was all about, the United States launched its own satellite, Explorer I, in 1958. That same year President Eisenhower stabled the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), this organization has become the main source for US space exploration since the beginning of its time. 1958 was just the beginning of the Space Race, but it really took off in 1959 when the Soviet’s launched Luna 2, the first space probe to hit the moon. “In April 1961, the Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first person to orbit Earth, traveling in the capsule0like spacecraft Vostok 1” (history.com) This really pushed the United States to do something greater, which inspired the beginning of Project Mercury, which was the US effort to send a man into space. Later that year President JFK made a very public and bold statement which was that the US would land a man on the moon before the end of the decade. This statement began the project Apollo. Apollo 8 was the first manned space mission to orbit the moon and July 16, 1969 Neil Armstrong, Edwin Aldrin, and Michael Collins, set off in Apollo 11, becoming the first men to walk on the moon on July 20, 1969.
This moon landing resulted in the “victory” of the space race for the United States. The Space Race brought in attention from the American Public and four failed attempts by the Soviets to launch a lunar landing craft. The American public were fascinated by the Space Race and thus deemed astronauts the ultimate American heroes and Soviets as the ultimate villains of the universe.
I think it's interesting you talked about space because it ties science into history which we don't usually do in class. The fact the US used the term manifest destiny shows how determined they were because in American history when we used the term manifest destiny we worked hard and eventually colonized the west. How do you think the Soviets felt about losing the race?
ReplyDeleteI think that a very important argument is often over looked when talking about the space race. Although america was the first to land on the moon, which one us the “space race” against the soviet union, it is often over looked that they beat us in ever other part of the competition. The Soviet Union was first to send a satellite into orbit, they were the first to send a man into space, and the were the first to send a probe to the moon. Many people over look these parts of the competition but was it not for these factors the United States would not have felt compelled to send a man to the moon because we wouldn’t have felt that, that step was needed in order to win the space race.
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ReplyDeleteDid the average American benefit from the huge amounts of money that the government put into NASA, or were the benefits of the space race more a show of American strength that raised morale? Although it can't be measured, I think that a large part of the space race was that it encouraged scientific thought, especially from children who lived during the entirety of it.
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