Space Race

The Space Race, an informal competition between the United States and the Soviet Union, lasted roughly from 1957 to 1975. It involved the parallel efforts by each of those countries to explore outer space with artificial satellites, to send humans into space, and to land people on the moon.

Lunar missions

See Main article: Moon landing

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Though the achievements made by the US and the USSR brought great pride to their respective nations, the ideological climate ensured that the Space Race would continue at least until the first human walked on the moon. Before this achievement, unmanned spacecraft had to first explore the moon by photography and demonstrate their ability to land safely on it.

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Unmanned probes

Following the Soviet success in placing the first satellite into orbit, the Americans focused their efforts on sending a probe to the moon. They called the first attempt to do this the "Pioneer" program. The Soviet Luna program became operational with the launch of Luna 1 on January 4 1959. The Americans' robotic Surveyor program had the goal of locating a potential landing-site on the moon. Following this, Apollo 8 carried out the first manned orbit of the moon on December 27 1968, laying the groundwork for placing a man on the moon.

Related Topics:
Pioneer - Luna 1 - January 4 - 1959 - Robot - Surveyor program - Apollo 8 - December 27 - 1968

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Landing a human on the moon

While the Soviets beat the Americans to most of the Space Race's initial firsts, they failed to beat the U.S. Apollo program to land a man on the moon. After the early Soviet successes, especially Gagarin's flight, President Kennedy and vice president Johnson looked for an American project that would capture the public?s imagination. The Apollo Program met many of their objectives and promised to defeat arguments from politicians both on the left (who favored social programs) and the right (who favored a more military project). Apollo?s advantages included: 1) economic benefits to several key states in the next election, 2) closing the ?missile gap? claimed by Kennedy during the 1960 election through dual-use technology and 3) technical and scientific spin-off benefits.

Related Topics:
Apollo program - Missile gap

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In conversation with NASA?s director, James E. Webb, Kennedy said:

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:Everything we do ought to really be tied in to getting on to the moon ahead of the Russians... otherwise we shouldn't be spending that kind of money, because I'm not interested in space... The only justification (for the cost) is because we hope to beat the USSR to demonstrate that instead of being behind by a couple of years, by God, we passed them.2.

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Kennedy and Johnson managed to swing public opinion: by 1965, 58 percent of Americans favored Apollo, up from 33 percent in 1963. After Johnson became President in 1963, his continuing support allowed the program to succeed.

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The USSR showed a greater ambivalence about human visits to the moon. Soviet leader Khrushchev wanted neither "defeat" by another power, nor the expense of such a project. In October 1963 he characterized the USSR as "not at present planning flight by cosmonauts to the moon", while adding that they had not dropped out of the race. A year passed before the USSR committed itself to a moon-landing attempt.

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Kennedy proposed joint programs, such as a moon landing by Soviet and American astronauts and improved weather-monitoring satellites. Khrushchev, sensing an attempt to steal superior Russian space technology, rejected these ideas. Korolev, the Soviet Space Agency's chief designer, had started promoting his Soyuz craft and the N-1 launcher rocket that had the capacity for a manned moon landing. Khrushchev directed Korolev's design bureau to arrange further space firsts by modifying the existing Vostok technology, while a second team started building a completely new launcher and craft, the Proton booster and the Zond, for a manned cislunar flight in 1966. In 1964 the new Soviet leadership gave Korolev the backing for a moon landing effort and brought all manned projects under his direction. With Korolev's death and the failure of the first Soyuz flight in 1967, the co-ordination of the Soviet moon landing program quickly unraveled. The Soviets built a landing craft and selected cosmonauts for the mission that would have placed Aleksei Leonov on the moon's surface, but with the successive launch failures of the N1 booster in 1969, plans for a manned landing suffered first delay and then cancellation.

Related Topics:
Soviet Space Agency - N-1 - Aleksei Leonov

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Apollo 11 gets there first

While unmanned Soviet probes did reach the moon before any U.S. craft, American Neil Armstrong became the first person to set foot on the lunar surface, after landing in July of 1969. Commander of the Apollo 11 mission, Armstrong received backup from command-module pilot Michael Collins and lunar-module pilot Buzz Aldrin in an event watched by over 500 million people around the world. Social commentators widely recognize the lunar landing as one of the defining moments of the 20th century, and Armstrong's words on his first touching the moon's surface became similarly memorable:

Related Topics:
Neil Armstrong - Apollo 11 - Michael Collins - Buzz Aldrin - 20th century

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That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.

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Other aspects of the moon landing

Unlike other international rivalries, the Space Race has remained unaffected by the desire for territorial expansion. After its successful landings on the Moon, the U.S. explicitly disclaimed the right to ownership of any part of the Moon.

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Some conspiracy theorists still insist on seeing the lunar landing as a hoax. These Apollo moon landing hoax accusations flourish in part because, while many enthusiasts predicted that moon landings would become commonplace, except for the several ensuing Apollo landings in the next decade such predictions have not yet come to pass.

Related Topics:
Conspiracy theorists - Apollo moon landing hoax accusations

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