Cold War: The Space Race

How would your life change if the Space Race never occurred? The Space Race was a huge competition between the Soviet Union and the United States to see who could reach their goals and improve their technology faster. This competition and race started during the Cold War, which added to the already competitive attitude during that era. The Space Race officially lasted from 1957 to 1975. Throughout this “race”, there were many technologies invented that we now use in our daily life, such as water purification systems, computer mouses, the dustbuster and even more (6). Overall, The Soviet Union and the United States continuously competed during the Cold War by creating their own space programs and by setting and achieving new goals such as launching …show more content…
However, the Soviet Union started doing this first and the United States did it after so they would not fall behind (9). On October 1st, 1957 with the help of their new scientists, the Soviet Union launched a man-made satellite into orbit named Sputnik One. This advancement marked the start of the Space Race and caught America off guard (8). In rebuttal, the United States created their own space program named NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) in July of 1958. The United States creating this space program showed real interest in space and meant that they were going to give their best effort to beat the Soviet Union. Finally, Nasa formed Project Mercury which lasted from 1958 to 1963. This project was created with three goals in mind: orbit a manned spacecraft around Earth, investigate a man’s ability to function in space and to recover a man and spacecraft safely …show more content…
Therefore, this showed that the Space Race was over because they were no longer competing, they were working together. After the Space Race, there were now two superpowers in space (The United States and The Soviet Union). Also, The United States and The Soviet Union started to work on their new program known as Apollo-Soyuz, which involved American astronauts and Soviet cosmonauts. After the Apollo-Soyuz project, the Americans and Soviets started working on the International Space Station with Europe, Japan and Canada (5). Even with multiple countries working on the International Space Station, it took a total of ten years and thirty individual missions to complete (4). Finally, the Space Station is the size of a football field and it orbits two hundred and forty miles above Earth