The space race in the 1960’s positively influenced America ...



Known by the world and especially America, the Space Race was a time marked by technological achievement derived from the fierce competitive spirit between the United States and the Soviet Union. For this to have happened in America, government needed to fund private companies and universities to spur each other into competition.

The space race officially kicked off in October 1957 with the launch of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics’ artificial satellite, Sputnik. The Russian Kremlin (essentially their White House) did not consider it a significant event, and largely ignored it, but the rest of the world was stunned by the accomplishment, and with the United States of America seeing it as an insult to their lack of space-based technology, commenced building and inventing their own satellites in direct competition. Since Sputnik was launched at the height of the Cold War, Americans were fearful of the possibilities that an enemy with space-based technology had. This fear gave them a reason to beat the Russians at their own game, culminating in the landing on the moon by the American-led Apollo 11, and ending with the cooperative Apollo-Soyuz test flight in July of 1975.

Competition creates quality, and so the competition between the two superpowers allowed technology to advance in a way that would’ve never happened otherwise. Had there been no competition between the U.S.’s universities for government money, no Kennedy urging the government to beat the Soviet Union, or no fears that the Soviet Union would soon have military satellites in space to attack America at will, America simply wouldn’t have been a major part of the space race at all. Kennedy explained this fear best when he said: “If the Soviets control space, they can control Earth, as in the past centuries the nations that controlled the seas dominated the continents” (). Bearing this in mind, the U.S. initiated a massive program promoting grants to competing universities to research space-technology, relying on its prestigious collegiate system to act as the technological vanguard as well as private corporations. Walter A. McDougal writes in an interview for American Heritage:

Well, as soon as Uncle Sam appears at the door of the Treasury with forty-four billion dollars in his hands, that creates an awful lot of temptation. Congressmen, bureaucracies, big contractors, grant-seeking academics-everybody’s going to want to get on the gravy train.

This signifies that with the government looking to give large sums of money to whomever wants the job, the entire industry is suddenly alight with progress and achievement towards government goals.

Although competition is extremely valuable, conviction and inspiration is equally as valuable, contributing to the fact that most Americans were behind beating the Soviet Union in space technology, and that they did not want a hostile military presence above their heads. Propaganda and continual coverage of the conflict that was prevalent during the 1960s greatly influenced the American people, and as Americans finally landed on the moon, its citizens rejoiced at their great victory. It was mostly for propaganda, however, as Paul Spudis wrote for :

The so-called ‘Moon race’ of the 1960's was a Cold War exercise of soft power projection, meaning that no real military confrontation was part of it, but rather, it was a competition by non-lethal means to determine which country had the superior technology and by implication, the superior political and economic system. In short, it was largely a national propaganda struggle.

Here, Spudis explains that what mattered most was not the technological value of the achievement, but the political one; this space race occurred in a time where newly-formed third-world countries were looking at these two political and economic giants of the world to see which system would be superior — capitalism or communism.

The actions during the space race have left us with technological and scientific achievements that the current generation practically reveres. Two superpowers went head-to-head in a competition that has changed the world since. In today’s world, when politicians talk of budget cuts to space programs, they forget that the technology has paid for itself many times over. The politicians don’t think about what would’ve happened had we gone along the technological path we were on. Who knows what advances we’d be able to make if we were to continue with space-technology?

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