The Failure Of The Space Race In The United States

The word race is defined at its core as a competition between runners, horses, vehicles, boats, etc. to see which is the fastest in covering a set course. Well, interestingly enough, a race of a different kind occurred between two countries from the years 1957 to 1969. The competition was unclear, and the opponents were on two entirely different continents, not something as simplistic as two horses. The United States and the United Soviet States of Russia both set out as arch rivals in the “Space Race,” a quest for dominance beyond the known Planet Earth. Ironically enough, just as communism was spreading to all parts of the world, the United States always sought to squash this form of government, despite somewhat dire consequences. Now, with

take outer space. And so the Space Race began with true intentions unclear, an effort to “win” outer space, and the victorious United States only won by taking the most extreme of measures and spending billions upon billions of dollars. The United States entered the space race for a large number of reasons. Primarily, with the launch of Sputnik, the United States as a whole was petrified of the arms potential that such a country could have. They had just successfully launched a satellite into orbit, the possibility of a launched nuclear warhead on the part of the U.S.S.R. that could come to demolish entire countries seemed a very immanent possibility and a menacing threat. These Soviet accomplishments, however, were surrounded in a shroud of secrecy. Shortly after this primary launch, the United States set out in this race in order to beat their main opponent, Soviet Russia. If the Russians

The Americans took a much more urgent approach after seeing what the U.S.S.R. was truly capable of. The United States would respond with various satellites including those of the Explorer Series and more. However, the Soviet Union would again one-up the United States, and all of their now seemingly feeble satellite launches, by putting the first man into outer space, Yuri Gagarin, in 1961. Now the quest gained an even more competitive drive and the United States soon put Alan B. Shepard into space twenty-three days later. The Space Race was truly a trek for the firsts of history, essentially just exterrestrial one-ups throughout an extended period of time. That very same year, John F. Kennedy founded NASA, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, just for that purpose, to explore the world beyond their own, while maintaining the central aim, to beat the Soviets outright. JFK was a leading power in this race, and “by giving NASA programs top priority, his actions essentially played on American fears of communism and implicitly inferred that the Eisenhower administration had not done enough to meet the Sputnik challenge. Too many Americans were beginning to feel a need to vindicate the ‘long-standing communist boast that theirs was the superior system for galvanizing human productivity’” (Koman 43). Winning this space race was way more than just an extraterrestrial