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.

The "end" of the Space Race

While the Sputnik 1 launch can clearly be called the start of the Space Race, its end is more debatable. Most hotly contested during the 1960s, the Space Race continued apace through the Apollo moon landing of 1969. Although they followed Apollo 11 with five more manned lunar landings, American space scientists turned to new arenas. Skylab would gather data, and the Space Shuttle would work on returning spaceships intact from space journeys. Americans would claim that by first landing a man on the moon they had won this unofficial "race". Soviet scientists meanwhile pushed ahead with their own projects, and would likely not have conceded anything like defeat. In any event, as the Cold War cooled, and as other nations began to develop their own space programs, the notion of a continuing "race" between the two superpowers became less real.

Related Topics:
1960s - Skylab - Space Shuttle

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Both nations had developed manned military space programs. The USAF had proposed using its Titan missile to launch the Dyna-Soar hypersonic glider to use in intercepting enemy satellites. The plan for the Manned Orbiting Laboratory (using hardware based on the Gemini program to carry out surveillance missions) superseded Dyna-Soar, but this also suffered cancellation. The USSR commissioned the Almaz program for a similar manned military space station, which merged with the Salyut program.

Related Topics:
Dyna-Soar - Manned Orbiting Laboratory - Almaz

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The Space Race slowed after the Apollo landing, which many observers describe as its apex or even as its end. Others, including space historian Carole Scott and Romanian Dr. Florin Pop's Cold War Project, feel its end came most clearly with the joint Apollo-Soyuz mission of 1975. The Soviet craft Soyuz-19 met and docked in space with America's Apollo 18, allowing astronauts from the "rival" nations to pass into each other's ships and participate in combined experimentation. Although each country's endeavors in space persisted, they went largely in different "directions", and the notion of a continuing two-nation "race" became outdated after Apollo-Soyuz.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Even at this point of cooperation the Soviet leadership was alarmed at the prospect of USAF involvement with the Space Shuttle programme and began the competing Buran and Energia projects. In the early 1980s the commencement of the US Strategic Defense Initiative further escalated competition that only resolved with the collapse of the Eastern Bloc in 1989.

Related Topics:
USAF - Space Shuttle - Buran - Energia - Strategic Defense Initiative

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~