The race to space was born out of fear, in the face of a new catastrophic threat, the atomic bombs. Out of the nuclear ashes of World War II two opposing superpowers rose, those with two opposing economic systems: capitalist America and communist Soviet Union. Each was sure that the other was out to conquer the world, giving way to the Cold War.
On both sides, rivals began stockpiling nuclear weapons, in order to demonstrate their power. Therefore, they chose to use space as a new way to hand over their weapons without being noticed, leading to a new idea, what if rockets could also spy on the enemy and not only carry weapons?.That's how the space race started.
October 4, 1957: The first satellite
The United States received news that the Soviet Union had achieved this goal earlier. The sputnik-1 (first satellite, Soviet), was the size of a beach ball, had four protruding antennas, its weight was 184 Ib, its measurement was 2.3 m and only one watt of energy was enough for its transmitter to work radio, a phone takes 6. It took 2 months to orbit the earth, traveling more than the distance between Earth and Mars before falling from the sky. Its beeped sending shockwaves around the world as a signal for its trip.
The reaction was one of concern and astonishment, it confirmed that the enemy had a great advantage, at least temporarily in the development of space travel. After this, was just terror in the U.S.A., an enemy object was flying over their country. What if Soviet weapons fell on them? up intil this point the score was, soviets 1, Americans 0.
July 29, 1958 : NASA creation.
So the answer was to create a specialized organization called the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), announcing that they would take a human being into space Before the Soviets.
The gravity required to accelerate an object through the atmosphere is beyond what humans can withstand. The space is also cold, but the blood will boil and evaporate, because there is no pressure to keep it liquid. The return is another problem, the temperatures generated by friction can reach 2760 C, half the heat of the sun.
NASA recruited seven men who had the correct material to undertake the journey, (the Mercury seven).For their part, the Soviets chose their own star squad, led by Yuri Gagarin, fighter pilot, of 26 years old, the perfect model for communism. However, test after test, both programs suffer major setbacks.
1961 April 12: First man in space.
The earth looked like a delicate blue floating in a black sky, says the first man in space after his 108-minute journey, Yuri Gagarin. The world is impressed by his journey around the earth and more by his safe return. Who 's counting?, but soviets 2, U.S.A 0
May 5, 1961: United States’s new project.
Nasa launched Alan Shepard, just traversing the atmosphere with an even shorter trip. Space fever consumed the entire nation at this point. Tensions between powers increased with the construction of the Berlin Wall, which separated Eastern Europe and the capitalist West. President J.F.K announced that NASA was preparing to go further, to go to the moon at the end of the decade.
This became the largest resource gamble made in the history of a country in peacetime,the Apollo program, to put a man on the moon. NASA budgets were skyrocketing and Kennedy was behind that at every turn with constant visits to NASA (November 16, 1963). However, only 6 days later he was assassinated, therefore NASA loses its strongest ally and the public begins to lose interest in the new race to the moon and questioning its rising costs and the taxes it implies.
Another problem arose with the Vietnam War, when the United States sent 184 troops to Vietnam to stop the spread of communism. The Soviets accumulate space merits, from the first object in space, to the first woman in space in (1963), Valentina Tereshkova, and the first spacewalk in 1965 (Alexei Leonov). So, Soviets 4, U.S.A 0.
1967: United States’s tragedy and a new project.
They were preparing for their first test launch in January 1967, a routine rocket test resulted in catastrophe, where astronauts Roger Chaffee, Edward White and Gus Grissom were killed in a fire in their capsule, leaving it in ruins.
So, the country wonders, is it really worth dying in space?, But they have invested too much, with 400 thousand people on the payroll, NASA is more than determined to leave their footprints on the moon, for this, they resort to an ex-Nazi. Hitler's favorite rocket engineer Wernher Von Braun, inventor of the world's first ballistic missile, the V2, which devastated London during WWII, is now creating a much larger rocket.
Saturn V, the engine of NASA's lunar adventure, measured more than 100 m and weighed more than 2,812,272 kg, that was, 1,240 trucks. It generated 34 million newtons of force, the equivalent of 43 jumbo jets, with enough power to carry 44,000 kilos. Again, who’s counting?, but this Soviets 4 and the U.S.A, kind a -1.
December 21, 1968
Frank borman, Jim Lovell and Bill Anders astronauts, embarked on the immense Saturn V rocket, after three days in space, the men enter lunar orbit, unprecedented success, the United States received the merits of the first humans to orbit the Earth and the first photo of the Earth from the moon, photo: earthrise.
And only seven months later, Neil Armstrong took that giant and unforgettable leap for mankind in Apollo 11, July 20, 1969. ¡The first man who actually walked on the moon!.And in the moon race, we can finally say, Soviets 0, U.S.A 5
The feat was seen by more than 500 million people, and inspired engineers and astronauts. In the next three years, ten more Americans land on the moon and the Soviets abandon any ambition to get there instead focusing on another space dream.
In 1968, the Orbit (Mir) space station was launched.
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