User:Abebenjoe/Sandbox

For a discussion of all spaceflight programs to date, see History of spaceflight. For a list of key events, seeTimeline of space exploration. For other uses of the term "Space Race", see Space Race (disambiguation).

The second man to walk on the Moon, Buzz Aldrin, photographed by the first man, Neil Armstrong, reflected in Aldrin's visor.

The Soviet Union's Salyut 4 space station.

The Space Race was a heated competition between the Soviet Union and the United States to develop the first real-world exploration of outer space. It involved pioneering efforts to launch artificial satellites, send man into space, and land him on the Moon. The term refers to a specific period in human history, and does not include subsequent efforts by these or other nations to explore space.

The Space Race occurred between 1957 and 1975, as a highly visible aspect of the Cold War, with its origins in the missile-based arms race between the two nations. It was motivated by the desire to display scientific and technological superiority, which translated to military strength. It effectively began with the Soviet launch of Sputnik 1 on 4 October 1957, and ended in a period of detente with the co-operative Apollo-Soyuz Test Project flight in July 1975. In between, it became a focus of the cultural, technological, and ideological rivalry between the two nations. It provided the side benefits of boosted societal morale, and civilian and military applications of the developed space technology.

Background

Rockets have interested scientists and amateurs for centuries. The Chinese used them as weapons beginning in the Song Dynasty, and simple (but inaccurate) iron rockets were common ship-and land-based weapons by the 19th century.

Russian pioneer Konstantin Tsiolkovsky theorized in the 1880s on multi-stage, liquid fuel rockets which might reach space and established the basics of rocket science. His rocket equation which determines flight velocity based on propellant consumption, is still used in the design of modern rockets today. Tsiolkovsky also wrote the first theoretical description of a man-made satellite.

Shortly after the Autumn of 1914, American Robert H. Goddard wrote a thesis, A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudesafter receiving two patents on elements of rocket propulsion. The paper was published by the Smithsonian Institution and gained him a $5,000 research grant, but unfortunately resulted in negative publicity for Goddard, ignoring his careful research and characterizing him as the "crackpot moon man." By 1926, he had built rockets and started outdoor testing, launching the first known liquid-fueled rocket. By 1929, he had attracted the attention of Mrs. Harry Guggenheimand Charles Lindberg. This resulted in another research grant of $100,000 from the Guggenheim Foundation, which allowed him to move to Roswell, NM to work on bigger and more complex designs. While his first design was uncontrolled, he later invented gyro-stabilized systems that foreshadowed those used in later practical space vehicles.

However, the realization of such vehicles required large amounts of capital, labor and material. Private enterprise would only undertake this given a profitable market, and as most of the public still scoffed at the idea of real-world space travel, this did not exist. Therefore, this implied the necessity of government sponsorship.

World War II foundations

In the mid-1920s, German aerospace engineers experimented with liquid-fuel rockets capable of reaching high altitudes and traversing long distances. In 1932, the Reichswehr (predecessor of the Wehrmacht), considered rockets as long-range artillery, because the Treaty of Versailles forbade long-range cannon.

In the Second World War (1939–45), Wernher von Braun, an aspiring rocket engineer with dreams of flying men to the moon, was employed by Nazi Germany to develop rockets for use as weapons (1933–45). In 1942, as Technical Director of the Army Rocket Center at Peenemünde, he introduced the A-4 rocket, the first to reach outer space. In 1943, Germany began mass producing the A-4 as the Vergeltungswaffe 2(“Vengeance Weapon” 2), a ballistic missile with a 300-kilometer (190 mi) range carrying a1,000-kilogram (2,200 lb) warhead.

Soviet aircraft and rocket engineer Sergey Korolyov was arrested in 1938 during Joseph Stalin's Great Purge and imprisoned for six years. After his release, he eventually became the USSR's chief rocket and spacecraft engineer, and could be considered the Russian counterpart to von Braun.

In 1945 at War’s end, American, British, and Soviet scientific intelligence teams competed to capture the German rockets, designs, and engineers. Each of the Allies captured a share of the available German scientists, but with Operation Paperclip the US benefited most, recruiting von Braun and many others, who later developed the missile and space exploration programs of the US.

Cold War origins

After the war, the US and the USSR, once allies, became involved in a Cold War (1945–91) of political conflict and military tension. The US defense strategy included a large Air Force employingair-refuelable, strategic bombers and advance bases in Europe and Turkey, close to Soviet airspace. Since the USSR had neither an equivalent air force, nor advance bases near the continental US, in 1947 Stalin decided to counter by devolping Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs). The government encamped its captured German rocket specialists in a Collective in the Moscow suburb of Khimki. They were not allowed to participate in Soviet missile design, but were used as problem-solving consultants to the Soviet engineers. The Germans were eventually repatriated in 1951-53.

Korolyov constructed the R-1 rocket, a copy of the V-2 based on some captured materials, but later developed his own distinct design. In 1953, he was given the go-ahead to develop the R-7 rocket, which was successfully tested in August 1957 and became the world's first ICBM. It would later be used to launch the first satellite into space, and derivatives would launch all manned Soviet spacecraft.

The United States, in contrast to the Soviets, allowed von Braun's team to actively participate in missile development. Competition among the U.S. armed services meant that each force (Army, Navy and Air Force), developed its own ICBM programs. The Air Force initiated ICBM research in 1946 with the MX-774. However, its funding was cancelled and only three partially successful launches were conducted in 1948, of an intermediate rocket. In 1951, the Air Force began a new ICBM program called B-65 (later renamed SM-65 Atlas) and launched the first successful US ICBM, the 1.44-megatonAtlas D, on July 29, 1959. This rocket would later be used as the orbital launch vehicle for the manned Project Mercury and unmanned Agena Target Vehicleused in the manned Project Gemini.

First unmanned satellites

On July 29, 1957, in recognition of the 1957-1958 International Geophysical Year, the White House announced that the U.S. intended to launch satellites by the spring of 1958. This became known as Project Vanguard. On July 31, the Soviets announced that they intended to launch a satellite by the fall of 1957.

Sputnik 1 was the size of a large beachball, weighed more than 80 kg and orbited the Earth for more than two months. (Replica pictured)

Explorer 1 model at NASA news conference.

On 4 October 1957, the Soviet Union successfully launched Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite to orbit the Earth, on Korolyov's R-7 missile, thus beginning the Space Race and making the USSR the first space power. The Soviet government derived great propaganda value from the launch, to boost the morale of its own citizens and claiming to the world proof of the superiority of Soviet communism over Western capitalism.

In the meantime, a public and embarrassing Project Vanguard launch failure had occurred at Cape Canaveral. But nearly four months after the launch of Sputnik 1, the United States successfully launched its first satellite, Explorer 1, with an alternate program on an accelerated schedule, becoming the second space power. Explorer 1 flight data confirmed the existence of the radiation belt theorized byJames Van Allen, considered one of the outstanding discoveries of the International Geophysical Year.

Sputnik's success and Vanguard's failure caused such political turmoil in the United States that the period is known as theSputnik crisis. President Dwight D. Eisenhower's administration quickly enacted several initiatives to address the perceived technical shortcomings in the United States. Within a year, the United States Congress passed legislation creating NASA, as well as the National Defense Education Act, the most far-reaching federally-sponsored education initiative in the nation's history. The NDEA authorized expenditures of more than $1 billion for a wide range of reforms including new school construction, fellowships and loans to encourage promising students to seek higher education, new efforts in vocational education to meet critical manpower shortages in the defense industry, and a host of other programs. In 1959, NASA initiated Project Mercury to put a man in space.

Apart from their political value as technological achievements, these first satellites had real scientific value. Sputnik helped to determine the density of the upper atmosphere, through measurement from the ground of the satellite's orbital changes. It also provided data on radio-signal distribution in the ionosphere. Pressurized nitrogen, in the satellite's body, provided the first opportunity for meteoroid detection. If a meteoroid penetrated the satellite's outer hull, it would be detected by the temperature data sent back to Earth. Two photometers were on board for measuring solar radiation (ultraviolet and x-ray emissions) and cosmic rays.

Unmanned lunar probes

File:Lunokhod 1.jpg

Lunokhod 1 lunar rover built by the Soviet Union. Lunokhod was the first roving remote-controlled robot to land on another world.

Main article: Moon landing

Following the Soviet success in sending the first satellite into orbit, the Americans focused their efforts on sending a probe to the Moon. The Pioneer program made several attempts which failed. This was followed by the Ranger program, which succeeded.

The Soviets launched Luna 1 on 4 January 1959, which became the first probe to reach the vicinity of the Moon. The first craft to reach the surface of the Moon was Luna 2, launched on 12 September 1959.

Later, the United States conducted the Lunar Orbiter program to map potential manned landing sites, and the roboticSurveyor program achieved soft landings.

Animals in space

Main article: Animals in space

Before sending men into space, both countries took the cautious approach of sending mammals in automated spacecraft first, sending medical instrumentation back to Earth.

The Soviet Union launched the first animal in Earth orbit, the dog Laika (in English, "Barker") on Sputnik 2, November 3, 1957. The dog was not meant to be returned to Earth alive, being given a finite amount of air, food and water planned to run out before the orbit decayed due to atmospheric drag and the craft burned up like a meteor, which it did on April 14, 1958. In October 2002, it was revealed that a malfunction inhibited operation of the temperature control system, and Laika had actually died five to seven hours after launch from overheating and stress.

In 1960, the Soviets orbited the dogs Belka and Strelka and successfully returned them.

The U.S. launched two chimpanzees: Ham sub-orbitally on Mercury-Redstone 2, January 31, 1961; andEnos for two of three planned orbits on Mercury Atlas 5, November 29, 1961. Both chimps were successfully recovered alive.

First humans in space

The Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space when he entered orbitin Vostok 1 on April 12, 1961, a day now celebrated as a holiday in Russia and in many other Eastern bloc countries. He orbited the Earth for 108 minutes, but not as a pilot. Russian doctors did not know whether a cosmonaut would be disabled by weightlessness, so his manual controls were disabled and ground technicians controlled the craft. The lead architects behind the Vostok 1 mission were the rocket engineers Korolyov and Kerim Kerimov.

Twenty-three days later, Alan Shepard became the first American in space aboard the Mercury capsuleFreedom 7. Though he did not achieve orbit, unlike Gagarin he was the first to exercise manual control of his spacecraft's attitude and retro-rocket firing. The first Soviet cosmonaut to exercise manual control was Gherman Titov in Vostok 2 on 6 August 1961.

On February 20, 1962 John Glenn became the first American to orbit Earth, completing three orbits in Friendship 7. His capability of manual attitude control became crucial when the automatic system failed.

The Soviet Union achieved the first dual manned flights, Vostok 3 and Vostok 4 on 11–15 August 1962. The two spacecraft came within approximately 6.5 kilometres (4.0 miles) of one another, close enough for radio communication. While this represented a significant technical accomplishment to launch two spacecraft from the same pad in a very short period of time, there was no capability of the spacecraft to maneuver close to each other (within visual range), and over the course of the missions they continued to drift as far as 2,850 kilometres (1,770 mi) apart.

The USSR launched the first woman in space, and also the first civilian, Valentina Tereshkova on June 16, 1963 inVostok 6. Launching a woman was reportedly Koroloyov's idea, but was done purely for propaganda value. Tereshkova was one of a small corps of female cosmonauts who were amateur parachutists, but Tereshkova was the only one to fly. The USSR didn't send another woman into space until 1982, in response to the United States opening their astronaut program to women.

US challenge: to the Moon

On April 20, 1961, about one week after Gagarin's flight, United States President John F. Kennedy sent a memo to Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson, asking Johnson to look into the status of America's space program, and into programs that could offer NASA the opportunity to catch up.Johnson responded about one week later, concluding that the US needed to do much more to reach a position of leadership, and recommending that a manned moon landing was far enough in the future that it was likely the United States would achieve it first.

Apollo program

Main article: Apollo program

On May 25, Kennedy announced his support for the Apollo program in an address to a special joint session of Congress:

"I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth."

He began forming a policy of justification for the Space Race as a vital national security front in the Cold War, which he expressed to the public in his famous September 12, 1962 speech at Rice Stadium where he stated:

The Mariner spacecraft now on its way to Venus is the most intricate instrument in the history of space science. The accuracy of that shot is comparable to firing a missile from Cape Canaveral and dropping it in this stadium between the 40-yard lines. ... For space science, like nuclear science and all technology, has no conscience of its own. Whether it will become a force for good or ill depends on man, and only if the United States occupies a position of pre-eminence can we help decide whether this new ocean will be a sea of peace or a new terrifying theater of war.

On November 21, 1962, Kennedy expressed this even more explicitly in a recorded White House meeting on increases toNASA's budget required for Apollo with Administrator James E. Webb and others:

Everything that we do ought to really be tied into getting onto the Moon ahead of the Russians. ...otherwise we shouldn't be spending this kind of money ...the policy ought to be that this is the top-priority program of the Agency, and one of the two things, except for defense, the top priority of the United States government. ... But we’re talking about these fantasticexpenditures ...and the only justification for it, ...to do it in this time [then estimated late 1967 or early 1968] or fashion, is because we hope to beat them and demonstrate that starting behind, as we did by a couple years, by God, we passed them.

Meanwhile, the Soviet government was showing ambivalence about human visits to the Moon. Premier Khrushchev wanted neither "defeat" by another power, nor the expense of such a project. In October 1963 he characterized the Soviet Union as "not at present planning flight by cosmonauts to the Moon", while adding that they had not dropped out of the race.

Kennedy proposed joint programs, such as a Moon landing by U.S. and Soviet astronauts and improved weather-monitoring satellites. Khrushchev rejected these ideas, saying he sensed an attempt to steal Russian space technology.

After Johnson became President on Kennedy's death in 1963, his appeal to Kennedy's legacy and continued staunch support kept the Apollo program on track.

Voskhod program

Main article: Voskhod programme

Korolyov, now the Soviet Union's chief designer, had planned further Vostok missions of longer duration, but following the announcement of the Apollo program, Khrushchev demanded more firsts, forcing what could be viewed as desperation measures. Korolyov had already started a conceptual design of the multi-person Soyuz spacecraft, but Khrushchev demanded something quicker and cheaper, which meant modifying the Vostok capsule intended for one person.

Another space-first was achieved by the Soviet Union with the first multi-member manned flight Voskhod 1, launched 12 October 1964. It carried three men, crammed into a heavily modified Vostok cabin. This flight was touted as the first in which a crew did not wear spacesuits. Although true, it was driven by constraints on rocket payload capability and cabin space rather than technical achievement, and at this point in the state of the manned-spaceflight art, was extremely risky. By contrast, the Apollo Command Module, not to fly until 1968, was designed to carry three men comfortably in a shirt-sleeve environment.

About a week before the first American manned Gemini flight, Korolyov upped the ante with the launch of Voskhod 2. It carried two crew members, including Alexey Leonov and he carried out the first spacewalk or extravehicular activity (EVA) on 18 March 1965. The two-man-crew was less crowded than in Voskhod 1, but the mission nearly ended in disaster, because Leonov had difficulty reentering the capsule, and was only able to do so by partially deflating his spacesuit. Another mishap, that could have been life-threatening, was a timing error related to the proper firing of the retrorockets that caused the ship to land 1,600 kilometres (990 mi) off target.

By this time Khrushchev had been removed from power, and since Voskhod had proved to be problem-prone, the remaining planned Voskhod flights 3 through 6 were cancelled. The USSR launched no more men into space for two years, while Korolyov was permitted to develop his next-generation Soyuz craft.

Project Gemini

Main article: Project Gemini

Focused by the commitment to a moon landing, in January 1962 the US introduced a two-man spaceflight program known asProject Gemini, which would support Apollo by developing the key spaceflight technologies of space rendezvous and docking of two craft, flight durations of sufficient length, and Extra-vehicular Activity (EVA) for extended periods, doing useful work rather than just "walking in space." Although taking a year longer than planned to reach its first flight, Gemini took advantage of the two-year hiatus after Voskhod, enabling the US to catch up with the Soviets's lead in manned spaceflight and pass them by achieving several significant firsts over the course of ten manned missions:

• On Gemini 3 (March 1965), astronauts Virgil "Gus" Grissom and John W. Young became the first to demonstrate ability to change their craft's orbit.
• On Gemini 5 (August 1965), astronauts L. Gordon Cooper and Charles "Pete" Conrad set a record of almost eight days in space, long enough for a manned lunar mission.
• On Gemini 6A (December 1965), Command Pilot Wally Schirra achieved the first manned space rendezvous withGemini 7, actively matching his orbit identically to the other craft and station-keeping at distances as close as1 foot (0.30 metres) and kept station for three orbits.
• Gemini 7 also set a manned space endurance record of fourteen days for Frank Borman and James A. Lovell, which stood until both nations started launching space laboratories in the early 1970s.
• On Gemini 8 (March 1966), Command Pilot Neil Armstrong achieved the first manned docking with another craft, an unmanned Agena target vehicle.
• Gemini 11 (September 1966), commanded by Conrad, achieved the first direct-ascent rendezvous with its Agena target on the first orbit, and used the Agena's rocket to achieve an apogee of 742 nautical miles (1,374 km), an earth orbit record never broken as of 2 June 2025 T 21:24 (UTC).
• On Gemini 12 (November 1966), Edwin E. "Buzz" Aldrin spent over five hours working comfortably in three (EVA) periods, finally proving humans could perform productive tasks outside spacecraft. (This goal proved to be the most difficult to achieve.)

Most of the novice pilots on the early missions would command the later missions. In this way, Project Gemini built up spaceflight experience for the pool of astronauts who would be chosen to fly the Apollo lunar missions.

USSR secretly accepts

Main article: Soviet Moonshot

In 1964, Korolyov pitched to Khrushchev a "Soyuz L3 complex spacecraft" consisting of a Soyuz 7K-LOK command ship with a manned Lunniy Korabl (lunar lander), launched by an N1 super heavy launch vehicle. But Khrushchev directed a second team headed by Vladimir Chelomey to start building a Soyuz derivative cislunar (looping around the Moon) craft called Zond to be launched on the existing Proton heavy booster, aiming for a planned first manned flight in 1966.

Zond (Soyuz 7K-L1) circumlunar spacecraft

In October 1964 Khrushchev was ousted, and the new Soviet leadership gave Korolyov the backing for a Moon landing effort and brought all manned projects back under his direction. This included the Proton-L1/Zond with a first manned lunar flyby now planned for 1967, and an N1-L3 manned landing program planned for 1968. All manned lunar plans were kept highly secret from the US and its western allies for nearly the entire remainder of the Cold War, and have only been brought to light starting in the 1990s.

In 1963-1967, Yuri Gagarin was head of a team of cosmonauts slated for two Soviet flyby and landing manned moon missions. The first open announcement about this was made by Tereshkova during her visit to Cuba in 1963.

But then Korolyov died on January 14, 1966, of causes which remain uncertain. He had a variety of medical problems, including a kidney disorder brought on by his imprisonment under Stalin.

Roadblock: first astronaut deaths

In the year 1967, both nations hit speed bumps which brought their programs to a standstill. Both nations had been rushing at full speed on the Apollo and Soyuz programs, without paying due dilligence to growing design and manufacturing problems. The results proved fatal to both pioneering crews.

In the US, the first manned Apollo crew, Command Pilot "Gus" Grissom, Senior Pilot Ed White, and Pilot Roger Chaffee, were killed by suffocation in a cabin fire that swept through their Apollo 1Command Module during a ground test on January 27, 1967. The fire was probably caused by an electical spark, fed out of control by the atmosphere of pure oxygen at slightly greater than atmospheric pressure. An investigative board detailed design and construction flaws in the spacecraft, failure to appreciate the hazard of the pure-oxygen atmosphere, and inadequate safety procedures, which had to be corrected over the next twenty-two months until the first manned flight could be made. Mercury and Gemini veteran Gus Grissom had been a favored choice of Deke Slayton, the grounded Mercury astronaut who became NASA's Director of Flight Crew Operations, to make the first manned landing.

In 1980 it was disclosed that the USSR had covered up the March 23, 1961 death of Soviet cosmonaut Valentin Bondarenkofrom massive third-degree burns in a fire in a high-oxygen isolation test chamber. This revelation subsequently caused some speculation as to whether the Apollo 1 disaster might have been averted had NASA been aware of the incident. Bondarenko was an early Vostok cosmonaut once slated in lieu of Gagarin to make the first manned flight. The Soviet government literally erased all traces of Bondarenko's existence in the cosmonaut corps upon his death.

Meanwhile, the Soviets were having their own problems with Soyuz development. Engineers are said to have reported 200 design faults to party leaders, but their concerns "were overruled by political pressures for a series of space feats to mark the anniversary of Lenin's birthday." On April 24, 1967, the USSR suffered the death of its first cosmonaut, Colonel Vladimir Komarov, the single pilot of Soyuz 1. This was planned to be a three-day mission to include the first Soviet docking with an unmanned Soyuz 2, but his mission was plagued with problems. Immediately, his craft was short of electrical power because only one of two solar panels had deployed. Then the automatic attitude control system began malfunctioning and eventually failed completely, resulting in the craft spinning wildly. Komarov was able to stop the spin with the manual system, which was only partially effective. The flight controllers immediately aborted his mission after only one day and he made an emergency re-entry.

Then a fault in the landing parachute system caused the primary chutes to fail, and the reserve chutes tangled together, causing Komarov to be killed on impact.

Fixing these and other spacecraft faults caused an eighteen-month delay before manned Soyuz flights could resume, similar to the US experience with Apollo. This, combined with Korolyov's death, lead to the quick unraveling of the Soviet Moon landing program. Komarov had been Korolyov's first choice for a landing; now, Gagarin and Aleksei Leonov became the most likely candidates.

Race to the Moon continues

The US kept on track in 1967 and 1968, fixing the fatal flaws in an improved version of the command ship, and proceeding with unmanned test launches of the Saturn V launch vehicle and Lunar Module lander. Grissom's mission of shaking down the first manned Apollo command ship was completed by his backup crew commanded by Schirra on Apollo 7, launched on October 11, 1968.

The USSR also fixed the parachute and control problems with Soyuz, and the next manned mission Soyuz 3 was launched on October 26, 1968. The goal was to complete Komarov's mission of rendezvous and docking with the unmanned Soyuz 2. Ground controllers brought the two craft to within 200 metres (660 ft) of each other, then cosmonaut Georgi Beregovoi took over control. He got within 1 metre (3.3 ft) of his target, but was unable to dock before expending his maneuvering fuel.

The Soviet Zond spacecraft was almost ready for manned Moon-flyby missions in 1968, although testing was not yet complete. After a successful flight around the Moon, Zond 4 crashed on March 7, 1968 during its return to Earth. Official announcements say that this Zond 4 was an unmanned automatic test flight which ended with its intentional destruction because its recovery trajectory positioned it over the Atlantic Ocean instead of over the USSR. After the declassifying of Soviet manned moon program files in 1989, it was officially reported also that Gagarin really was present at the Baykonurcosmodrome on March 2, 1968 with Valery Bykovsky to observe a launch, not to take part in flight. At the time, the L1/Zond spacecraft was not yet ready for manned missions after 5 unsuccessful and partially successful unmanned test launches: Cosmos 146 on March 10, 1967, Cosmos 154 on April 8, 1967, undesignated Zond 1967A September 27, 1967, undesignated Zond 1967B on November 22, 1967.

The Apollo program then hit another snag: the first manned Lunar Module was not ready in time for a December 1968 launch of the first of two manned orbital test missions. NASA planners overcame this and put the US in the lead, by cancelling the second manned test, delaying the first LM flight to early 1969, and sending Apollo 8 to lunar orbit without the LM in December. Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and Bill Anders became the first men to orbit the Moon on December 24 and safely splashed down on December 27.

This mission was in part motivated by intelligence rumors the Soviets might fly the manned cislunar Zond flight in late 1968. In September 1968, Zond 5 had made a cislunar flight and returned to Earth with animals (tortoises) on board. In November 1968 during the flight of Zond 6, US intelligence intercepted conversations among Pavel Popovich and Vitali Sevastyanov and a control center, leading to speculation that the manned flyby had occurred. It was soon clear, however, that these were test transmissions between two ground control centers, with the Zond 6 intercepting and relaying the transmissions.

However, it turned out there was no chance of the manned cislunar flight happening. With the successive launch failures of the N1 in 1969, Soviet plans for a manned landing suffered first delay and ultimately cancellation. A significant setback was the launch pad explosion of the N-1 on July 3, 1969. The rocket hit the pad after an engine shutdown, destroying itself and the launch facility.

A mounted slowscan TV camera shows Neil Armstrong as he climbs down the ladder to surface.

While unmanned Soviet probes had reached the Moon before any U.S. craft, Neil Armstrong became the first human to set foot on the lunar surface on July 21, 1969, after landing the previous day. Commander of the Apollo 11 mission, Armstrong was accompanied by Command Module Pilot Michael Collins and Lunar Module PilotEdwin "Buzz" Aldrin in an event watched by over 500 million people around the world. The lunar landing is widely recognized as one of the defining moments of the 20th century, as are Armstrong's words on first touching the Moon's surface:

That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind.

The Apollo program followed the first landing with six more attempts through 1972, five of which were successful. A serious command ship failure on Apollo 13 in April 1970 aborted the landing and placed the crew's lives in jeopardy, but they were able to use the LM as a "lifeboat" and returned to Earth safely.

The US moon program was not motivated by the desire for territorial expansion. The Outer Space Treaty signed by the US, USSR and United Kingdom effective October 10, 1967, expressly forbids territorial claims on any celestial body, nor was it the United States' intention to claim ownership of any part of the Moon. The plaque left on the moon by the Apollo 11 expedition declared, "We came in peace for all mankind."

Earth orbital space stations

The USSR Salyut 1 as seen from one of the two visiting Soyuz spacecraft.

The US Skylab space station.

Having lost the race to the Moon, the USSR decided to concentrate on orbital space stations. They launched six more Soyuz flights after Soyuz 3 in 1969 and 1970, then launched the first space station, the Salyut 1 laboratory designed byKerim Kerimov, on April 19, 1971. On April 23, the crew of Soyuz 10 attempted to dock with it, but failed to achieve a secure enough connection to safely enter the station. The Soyuz 11 crew of Vladislav Volkov, Georgi Dobrovolskiand Viktor Patsayev successfully docked on June 7 and completed a record 22-day stay on June 29. Unfortunately, the crew became the second in-flight space fatalaties during their re-entry the next day, when they were asphyxiated due to the opening of a faulty cabin pressure valve.

Salyut 1's orbit was increased to prevent premature re-entry, but further manned flights were delayed while the Soyuz was redesigned to fix the new safety problem. The station re-entered on October 11, after 175 days in orbit. The USSR attempted to launch a second Salyut-class station designated DOS (Durable Orbital Station)-2 on July 29, 1972, but a rocket failure caused it to fail to achieve orbit.

The US also had plans to fly a manned space laboratory as part of the Apollo Applications Program, using Apollo hardware. These originally called for its construction in orbit from a spent Saturn S-IVB rocket stage (used to launch the Apollo craft into earth orbit), but was ultimately pre-fabricated on Earth and launched by the first two stages of the Saturn Vlunar launch vehicle. Named Skylab, it launched on May 14, 1973 after completion of the Apollo lunar program. It weighed169,950 pounds (77,090 kg), was 58 feet (18 m) long by 21.7 feet (6.6 m) in diameter, with a habitable volume of10,000 cubic feet (280 m³).

Skylab suffered a partial failure when its micrometeoroid shield and solar panels erroneously deployed during launch, and high aerodynamic forces ripped off the shield and one of the two solar panels. The shield was also designed to provide thermal protection from sunlight, and the internal temperature rose to dangerous levels. The remaining solar panel did not fully deploy and was not producing power. The launch of the first crew was delayed while a plan was devised to try to salvage the station by freeing the panel and deploying a substitute heat shield.

Charles Conrad, Jr., Paul J. Weitz and Dr. Joseph P. Kerwin, MD were launched aboard Skylab 1 on May 25, successfully accomplished these repairs by EVA and completed a 28-day stay, a new space endurance record. This was successively broken by Skylab 2 (59 days) on September 25, 1973 and Skylab 3 (84 days) on February 8, 1974. Skylab stayed in orbit another five years before re-entering on July 11, 1979.

After the DOS-2 failure, the USSR attempted to launch four more Salyut-class stations through 1975, with another failure due to an explosion of the final rocket stage, which punctured the station with shrapnel so that it wouldn't hold pressure. While all of the Salyuts were presented to the public as non-military scientific laboratories, some of them were actually covers for military reconnaissance stations.

The Soviets didn't break the US endurance record of 84 days until March 16, 1978, when a Soyuz crew stayed aboard Salyut 6 for 96 days.

Military applications

Throughout the Space Race, both nations also developed military space programs in secret, starting with reconnaissance satellites well before the launch of Sputnik 1. The first Soviet photoimaging satellite was the Zenit spy satellite, which Korolyov designed for dual-use and became the Vostok. The US with its Discoverer series, code-named Corona. Discoverer 13 became the first payload recovered from space in August 1960, one day ahead of the first Soviet recovered payload.

Both nations developed major military space programs. In general, the United States took most of these programs only through the design phase, while the Soviet Union built, or even flew, theirs.

1. Supersonic Intercontinental Cruise Missile: Navaho (test program stopped) vs. Buran cruise missile(plan)
2. Small Winged Spacecraft: X-20 Dyna-Soar (mockup) vs. MiG-105 (flight-tested)
3. Satellite Inspection Capsule: Blue Gemini (mockup) vs. Soyuz interceptor (plan)
4. Military Capsule with hatch in heat shield: Gemini B (tested crewless in space) vs. VA TKS, also known as Merkur space capsule (flown crewless as part of TKS)
5. Ferry to Military Space Station: Gemini Ferry (plan) vs. TKS (flown crewless in space, and docked with a Salyut)

The most sophisticated of these manned programs were military space stations. The USAF developed plans for a Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL), which was publicly announced on December 10, 1963. This was to use a modified version of the Gemini capsule as the crew launch and return vehicle, with a hatch cut through the heat shield to provide the astronauts intra-vehicular access to the laboratory. The Air Force chose its own astronaut corps, and flight-tested the heat shield hatch by reusing a Gemini capsule which had flown on the unmanned Gemini 2 mission. The program proceeded with plans for a first flight in December 1969, but in July of that year President Richard M. Nixon, after being briefed on the capabilities of unmanned satellites versus the MOL, decided to direct his Secretary of Defense to cancel MOL, since manned space reconnaissance wasted resources to keep a crew to maintain the station between picture-taking, while unmanned satellites could do the same job much more cost-effectively. Those disappointed USAF astronaut candidates willing to remain astronauts were accepted by NASA into its civilian corps.

The Soviets went as far as developing and flying several manned military reconnaissance stations which they code-namedAlmaz which they kept secret from the world by masquerading them as the non-military Salyut 2, 3, and 5 stations. These flew from 1973 to 1977, and actually carried a 23mm rapid-fire cannon to defend against imagined US attack. In 1978, the Soviet Ministry of Defence finally reached the same conclusion as the US and canceled the manned Almaz program, converting it to a heavy unmanned reconnaissance satellite.

Unmanned planetary probes

Venus

Main article: Venera

The Soviet Union first attempted to launch a probe named Venera to fly by the planet Venus on February 4, 1961. The craft successfully reached an Earth parking orbit, but the departure stage failed to ignite to send the craft to Venus. The government concealed the failure, identifying the launch as Sputnik 7. They tried again on February 12, and this timeVenera 1 successfully escaped Earth orbit on a trajectory taking it near Venus, but on February 26 communications were lost so no data from Venus could be received. The probe passed within 100,000 kilometres (62,000 mi) of Venus on May 19 and 20, remaining in a heliocentric orbit.

The Soviets tried to launch three more Venera probes in August and September 1962, but all failed at launch.

Venus, the first planet flown past by a spacecraft in December 14, 1962, as photographed by Mariner 10 in 1974.

Main article: Mariner program

The United States launched its first Venus flyby attempt, Mariner 1 on July 22, 1962, but its rocket veered off course and was intentionally destroyed approximately 5 minutes after liftoff. Mariner 2 was successfully launched on August 27, 1962, and passed within 22,000 miles (35,000 km) of Venus on December 14. It sent back the first sensor data from Venus, revealing a high surface temperature, but carried no cameras since they would not be able to penetrate the planet's dense cloud cover.

The Soviets tried two more Venus probes in February and March 1964, but both failed at launch. They successfully launchedVenera 2 (fly-by) and Venera 3 on November 12 and 16, 1965, but again these probes' communication systems failed, though Venera 3 made the first crash-landing as planned on March 1, 1966. These were followed by two more launch failures on November 23 and 26. They finally succeeded with Venera 4, launched on June 12, 1967, which crash-landed on Venus on October 18, collecting atmospheric data on entry.

The US launched Mariner 5 to Venus on June 14, 1967 for an October flyby. The next four Mariner probes were sent to Mars instead of Venus.

File:Venera9.png

180-degree panorama taken by Venera 9 of the surface of Venus

The Soviet Union'sVenera 7, launched in 1970, became the first craft to soft-land on Venus. Venera 9, launched in 1975, transmitted the first pictures from the surface of another planet.

The United States completed its Mariner program with Mariner 10, launched in November 1973 for a flyby with Venus on February 5, 1974, and two flybys of Mercury on March 29 and September 21 the same year. It was the first, and as of 2 June 2025 T 21:24 (UTC), the only spacecraft to fly by Mercury.

Mars

Main article: Mars probe program

The sharpest of the first close-up image of Mars taken by Mariner 4, clearly showing craters.

The Soviet Union first attempted to send two Marsnik probes to Mars in 1960; both failed at launch. They tried again with a Mars 1 probe in 1962, but this failed en route to Mars. These were followed by Mars 1962A and Mars 1962B, both of which failed to leave Earth orbit.

They tried again in 1964, with two more failures, Zond 1964A and Zond 2. That same year, the US launched Mariner 3 and Mariner 4 on November 5 and 28, respectively. Mariner 3's nose cone failed to jettison, causing it to fail to reach Mars, but Mariner 4 achieved the first successful Mars flyby on July 14-15, 1965. It passed within6,120 miles (9,850 km) and transmitted pictures back to Earth.

In 1969, the Soviets made two more failed attempts, Zond 1964A and Zond 2. The US launched Mariner 6 on February 24, and Mariner 7 on March 21. These were both successful, achieving 2,130-mile (3,430 km) approaches on July 31 and August 5, respectively.

Meander in Scamander Vallis, as seen by Mariner 9.

In 1971, Mars achieved its closest approach to Earth since 1956. Both nations took advantage of this by attempting to send larger, more complex probes capable of orbiting the planet. The Soviet design consisted of an orbital "bus" vehicle which carried a lander intended to set a robotic rover on the surface. The USSR launched Mars 1971C on May 5, intended to beat the US Mariner 8 launched May 9 and Mariner 9 launched May 30. A control timer error kept Mars 1971C from leaving its Earth parking orbit, and Mariner 8's launch vehicle failed.

The USSR tried again with Mars 2 launched May 19 and Mars 3 launched May 28. These did not overtake Mariner 9, which achieved the first Martian orbit on November 13, with a periapsis of 930 miles (1,500 km) and sent back the first detailed pictures of the planet. Mars 2 successfully achieved orbit on November 27, but the lander crashed on the surface. Mars 3 was a limited success: it achieved orbit on December 2, but another control error did not send it into a low enough orbit. The lander achieved the first successful soft landing on December 2, but its communications were lost after 15 seconds.

The US tried no more Mars probes through 1975, but the Soviets launched four more Mars series probes in July and August of 1973, with mixed results. The first two were orbiters: Mars 4 failed to brake for orbit and flew by the planet, whileMars 5 achieved orbit but failed after 22 orbits (about 23 days). Mars 6 successfully landed, but only transmitted data for 224 seconds. The Mars 7 lander separated prematurely and missed the planet by 1,300 kilometres (810 mi).

Commercial applications

Communications satellites

The first communications satellite, the American Project SCORE, was launched on 18 December 1958, and relayed a Christmas message from President Dwight D. Eisenhower to the world. Other notable examples of satellite communication during (or spawned by) the Space Race include:

1960: Echo 1A: first passive communications satellite (US)

1960: Courier 1B: first active repeater satellite (US)

1962: Telstar: first transatlantic and first television transmissions (US)

1963: Syncom 2: first geosynchronous communications satellite (Clarke orbit) (US)

1972: Anik 1: first domestic communications satellite (Canada)

1976: Marisat: first mobile communications satellite (US)

The United States launched the first geosynchronous satellite, Syncom-2, on 26 July 1963. The success of this class of satellite meant that a simple satellite dish no longer needed to track the orbit of the satellite because that orbit remained geostationary. Henceforth ordinary citizens could use satellite-mediated communications transmissions for television broadcasts, after a one-time setup.

End of the Space Race

While the Sputnik 1 launch can clearly be called the start of the Space Race, its end is harder to pinpoint. In May of 1972, President Richard M. Nixon and Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev negotiated an easing of relations known as detente, creating a temporary "thaw" in the Cold War. In the American spirit of good sportsmanship after winning the Moon race, and in light of the USSR's willingness to be a bit more open about their (non-military) space projects, the time seemed right for cooperation rather than competition, and the notion of a continuing "race" began to subside.

Soyuz-U booster used to launch the Russian ASTP crew.

A Saturn IB launches the American ASTP crew into orbit.

The two nations planned a joint mission to dock the last US Apollo craft with a Soyuz, known as the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (ASTP). To prepare, the US designed a docking module necessary for compatibility between Apollo's docking system with the docking system the Soviets used, which allowed any of their craft to dock with any other (e.g. Soyuz/Soyuz as well as Soyuz/Salyut). The module was also necessary as an airlock to allow the men to visit each other's craft with incompatible cabin atmospheres. The USSR used the Soyuz 16 mission in December 1974 to prepare for ASTP.

The joint mission began when Soyuz 19 was launched first on July 15, 1975 at 12:20 UTC, and the Apollo craft was launched with the docking module six and a half hours later. The two craft rendezvoused and first docked on July 17 at 16:19UTC. The three astronauts conducted joint experiments with the two cosmonauts, and the crew shook hands, exchanged gifts and visits in each other's craft.

After the Space Race, the United States began developing a new generation of reusable orbital spacecraft known as the Space Shuttle, while the USSR continued to develop space station technology using their Soyuz vehicle as the shuttle.

Timeline of firsts (1957-1975)

A chart showing one interpretation of relative accomplishments with space probes and human space flight by graphing the cumulative achievement of a specific set of those accomplishments.

Date	Significance	Soviet Union Mission	US Mission
August 21, 1957	First intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM)	R-7 Semyorka
October 4, 1957	First artificial satellite First signals from space	Sputnik 1
November 3, 1957	First animal in orbit (dog Laika)	Sputnik 2
January 31, 1958	First detection of Van Allen radiation belts		Explorer 1-ABMA
March 17, 1958	First solar powered satellite		Vanguard 1-NRL
December 18, 1958	First communications satellite		Project SCORE-ABMA
January 2, 1959	First rocket engine restart in Earth orbit First lunar spacecraft First detection of solar wind	Luna 1
January 4, 1959	First man-made object in heliocentric orbit	Luna 1
February 17, 1959	First weather satellite		Vanguard 2-NRL
February 28, 1959	First satellite in a polar orbit		Discoverer 1-DARPA
August 7, 1959	First photograph of Earth from orbit		Explorer 6-NASA
September 13, 1959	First impact into another celestial body (Moon)	Luna 2
October 4, 1959	First photos of far side of the Moon	Luna 3
April 1, 1960	First Imaging weather satellite		TIROS-1-NASA
July 5, 1960	First reconnaissance satellite		GRAB-1-NRL
August 11, 1960	First satellite recovered intact from orbit		Discoverer 13-USAF
August 12, 1960	First passive communications satellite		Echo 1A-NASA
August 18, 1960	First reconnaissance satellite		KH-1 9009-USAF
August 19, 1960	First animals and plants returned alive from space	Sputnik 5
1961	First launch from orbit First mid-course corrections First spin-stabilisation	Venera 1
April 12, 1961	First manned spaceflight (Yuri Gagarin)	Vostok 1
May 5, 1961	First pilot-controlled space flight (Alan Shepard)		Freedom 7
March 7, 1962	First orbital solar observatory		OSO-1-NASA
August 12, 1962	First simultaneous launch of two manned spacecraft First ship-to-ship radio contact	Vostok 3 / Vostok 4
December 14, 1962	First planetary flyby (Venus)		Mariner 2-NASA
June 16, 1963	First woman in space (Valentina Tereshkova) First civilian in space	Vostok 6
June 19, 1963	Five-day manned space record	Vostok 5
July 19, 1963	First reusable manned spacecraft (X-15, suborbital)		X-15 Flight 90-NASA
July 26, 1963	First geosynchronous satellite		Syncom 2-NASA
December 5, 1963	First satellite navigation system		NAVSAT-USN
August 19, 1964	First geostationary satellite		Syncom 3-NASA
October 12, 1964	First multi-man crew (3)	Voskhod 1
March 18, 1965	First extra-vehicular activity ("space walk")	Voskhod 2
March 23, 1965	First manned spacecraft orbit change		Gemini 3-NASA
July 14, 1965	First Mars flyby		Mariner 4-NASA
August 29, 1965	Eight-day manned space record		Gemini 5-NASA
December 15, 1965	First orbital rendezvous (station-keeping, no docking)		Gemini 6A / Gemini 7-NASA
December 18, 1965	14-day manned space record		Gemini 7-NASA
February 3, 1966	First soft landing on another celestial body (Moon) First photos from another celestial body	Luna 9
March 1, 1966	First impact into another planet (Venus)	Venera 3
March 16, 1966	First manned spacecraft docking		Gemini 8 / Agena target vehicle-NASA
April 3, 1966	First artificial satellite around the Moon	Luna 10
September 12, 1966	First direct-ascent rendezvous on first orbit Record highest apogee (742 nmi) in manned Earth orbit		Gemini 11/Agena target vehicle-NASA
November 12–14, 1966	First 5.5 hr extra-vehicular activity First demonstration of practical work capability		Gemini 12-NASA
October 30, 1967	First docking of two unmanned spacecraft	Cosmos 186/ Cosmos 188
December 7, 1968	First orbital ultraviolet observatory		OAO-2-NASA
December 21, 1968	First manned orbit of the Moon		Apollo 8-NASA
January 16, 1969	First crew exchange in space	Soyuz 4 / Soyuz 5
July 21, 1969	First humans on the Moon(Neil Armstrong) First space launch from another body		Apollo 11-NASA
November 19, 1969	First precisely targeted manned landing on the Moon (Surveyor 3 site)		Apollo 12-NASA
September 24, 1970	First automatic sample return from the Moon	Luna 16
November 23, 1970	First remote-controlled mobile vehicle on another body (Moon)	Lunokhod 1
December 12, 1970	First X-ray orbital observatory		Uhuru (satellite)-NASA
December 15, 1970	First soft landing on another planet (Venus) First signals from another planet	Venera 7
April 23, 1971	First manned space station launched	Salyut 1
June 29, 1971	First manned orbital observatory (Orion 1) 23-day manned space record	Soyuz 11 / Salyut 1
July 31, 1971	First mobile vehicle lunar rover driven by humans on the Moon		Apollo 15-NASA
November 14, 1971	First orbit around another planet (Mars)		Mariner 9-NASA
November 27, 1971	First impact into Mars	Mars 2
December 2, 1971	First soft Mars landing First signals from Mars surface	Mars 3
March 3, 1972	First man-made object sent on escape trajectory away from the Sun		Pioneer 10-NASA
July 15, 1972	First mission to enter the asteroid belt and leave inner solar system		Pioneer 10-NASA
15 November 1972	First orbital gamma ray observatory		SAS-2-NASA
May 25, 1973	28-day manned space record		Skylab 1-NASA
July 28, 1973	56-day manned space record		Skylab 2-NASA
November 16, 1973	84-day manned space record		Skylab 3-NASA
December 3, 1973	First Jupiter flyby		Pioneer 10-NASA
February 5, 1974	First planetary gravitational assist (Venus flyby)		Mariner 10-NASA
March 29, 1974	First Mercury flyby		Mariner 10-NASA
July 15, 1975	First multinational manned mission	Soyuz 19	Apollo-Soyuz Test Project

Organization, funding, and economic impact

The huge expenditures and bureaucracy needed to organize successful space exploration led to the creation of national space agencies. The United States and the Soviet Union developed programs focused solely on the scientific and industrial requirements for these efforts.

On 29 July 1958, President Eisenhower signed the National Aeronautics and Space Act, establishing the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). When it began operations on 1 October 1958, NASA consisted mainly of the four laboratories and some 8,000 employees of the government's 46-year-old research agency for aeronautics, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). While its predecessor, NACA, operated on a US$5 million budget, the NASA budget rapidly accelerated to US$5 billion per year, including huge sums for subcontractors from the private sector. The Apollo 11 Moon landing, the high point of NASA's success, cost an estimated 20 to 25 billion dollars.

The amount spent by U.S. on the space race from 1957 - 1975 is estimated to be about $100 billion in 2004 inflation adjusted dollars. [1]

Lack of reliable statistics makes it difficult to compare U.S. and Soviet Union space spending, especially during the Khrushchev years. However in 1989, the Chief of Staff of the Soviet Armed Services, General M. Moiseyev, reported that the Soviet Union had allocated 6.9 billion rubles (about US$4 billion) to its space program that year. Other Soviet officials estimated that their total manned space expenses totalled about that amount over the entire duration of the programs, with some lower unofficial estimates of about four and half billion rubles. In addition to ambiguity of the figures, such comparisons must also take into account the likely effect of Soviet propaganda, which pursued the goal of making the Soviet Union look strong and of confusing the Western analysis.

Organizational issues, particularly internal rivalries, also plagued the Soviet effort. The Soviet Union had nothing like NASA (the Russian Aviation and Space Agency originated only in the 1990s). Too many political issues in science and too many personal views handicapped Soviet progress. Every Soviet chief designer had to stand for his own ideas, looking for the patronage of a communist official. In 1964, between the various chief designers, the Soviet Union was developing 30 different programs of launcher and spacecraft design. Following the death of Korolyov, the Soviet space program became reactive, attempting to maintain parity with the United States. In 1974 the Soviet Union reorganized its space program, creating theEnergia project to duplicate the U.S. Space Shuttle with Shuttle Buran.

The Soviets also operated in the face of an economic disadvantage. Although the Soviet economy was the second largest in the world; the U.S. economy was the largest. Some observers have argued that the high economic cost of the space race, along with the extremely expensive arms race, eventually deepened the economic crisis of the Soviet system during the late 1970s and 1980s and was one of the factors that led to the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Legacy

Advances in technology and education

Technology, especially in aerospace engineering and electronic communication, advanced greatly during this period. The effects of the Space Race however went far beyond rocketry, physics, and astronomy. "Space age technology" extended to fields as diverse as home economics and forest defoliation studies, and the push to win the race changed the very ways in which students learned science.

American concerns that they had fallen so quickly behind the Soviets in the race to space led quickly to a push by legislators and educators for greater emphasis on mathematics and on the physical sciences in American schools. The United States' National Defense Education Act of 1958 increased funding for these goals from childhood education through the post-graduate level. To this day over 1,200 American high schools retain their own planetarium installations, a situation unparalleled in any other country worldwide and a direct consequence of the Space Race.

The scientists fostered by these efforts helped develop for space exploration technologies which have seen adapted uses ranging from the kitchen to athletic fields. Dried fruits and ready-to-eat foods, in particular food sterilisation and package sealing techniques, stay-dry clothing, and even no-fog ski goggles have their roots in space science.

Today over a thousand artificial satellites orbit earth, relaying communications data around the planet and facilitatingremote sensing of data on weather, vegetation, and human movements to nations who employ them. In addition, much of the micro-technology which fuels everyday activities from time-keeping to enjoying music derives from research initially driven by the Space Race.

And with all these advances since the first Sputnik was launched, the former Soviet Union's R-7 (missile) rocket, that marked the beginning the space race, is still in use today, notably servicing the ISS.

Deaths

When the US Apollo 15 left the moon, the astronauts left behind a memorial in honor of all the people who had perished during the efforts to reach the moon from both the Soviet Union and the United States. This included the Apollo 1 and Soyuz 1 crews.

In 1971, Soyuz 11 cosmonauts Georgi Dobrovolski, Viktor Patsayev, and Vladislav Volkov asphyxiated during reentry. Since 1971, the Soviet/Russian space program has suffered no further losses.

Other astronauts died while training for space flight, including four Americans (Ted Freeman, Elliot See, Charlie Bassett, Clifton Williams) who died in crashes of T-38 aircraft. Soviet Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space, met a similar death when he crashed in a MiG-15 'Fagot' while training for a Soyuz mission, in 1968.

The worst disaster in rocketry was the R-16 failure in 1960, when improper shutdown and control procedures during hasty on-pad repairs caused the missile's second stage to fire straight onto the full propellant tanks in the still-attached first stage. The toxic fuel and fire killed around 100 top Soviet military and technical personnel.

See also

• Asia's Space Race
• Atmospheric reentry
• Celestial mechanics, calculating the trajectories for space travel
• Commercial spaceflight
• Space vehicle guidance using the gyroscopic compass
• List of spacecraft manufacturers
• Kliper Russian-European cooperation for a new 'space shuttle' type launch craft
• Orion, American counterpart to Kliper
• Moon Shot
• List of space exploration milestones, 1957-1969
• List of communications satellite firsts
• Spaceflight records
• US space surveillance network tracks objects in space
• Timeline of space exploration
• Timeline of Solar System exploration
• Woods Hole Conference

References

• An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917-1963, Robert Dallek (2003). ISBN 0-316-17238-3
• Arrows to the Moon: Avro's Engineers and the Space Race , Chris Gainor (2001). ISBN 1-896522-83-1
• Fallen Astronauts: Heroes Who Died Reaching for the Moon, Colin Burgess, Kate Doolan, Bert Vis (2003). ISBN 0-8032-6212-4
• Light This Candle : The Life & Times of Alan Shepard—America's First Spaceman, Neal Thompson (2004). ISBN 0-609-61001-5
• The New Columbia Encyclopedia, Col. Univ.Press (1975).
• The Right Stuff, Tom Wolfe (pbk ed. 2001). ISBN 0-553-38135-0 ISBN 0-613-91667-0
• Russia in Space: The Failed Frontier?, Brian Harvey (2001). ISBN 1-85233-203-4
• The Soviet Space Race With Apollo, Asif A. Siddiqi (2003). ISBN 0-8130-2628-8
• Soyuz: A Universal Spacecraft, Rex Hall, David J. Shayler (2003). ISBN 1-85233-657-9
• Space for Women: A History of Women With the Right Stuff, Pamela Freni (2002). ISBN 1-931643-12-1
• Space Exploration, Carole Scott, Eyewitness Books, 1997
• Sputnik and the Soviet Space Challenge, Asif A. Siddiqi (2003). ISBN 0-8130-2627-X
• Stages to Saturn: A Technological History of the Apollo/Saturn Launch Vehicles, Roger E. Bilstein (2003). ISBN 0-8130-2691-1
• Yeager: An Autobiography, Chuck Yeager (1986). ISBN 0-553-25674-2

External links

NASA:

• Communications Satellites from the NASA website
• Scan of a letter from Wernher Von Braun to Vice President Johnson, dated 29 April 1961, providing Von Braun's personal (not professional) assessment of United States and Soviet capability. The analysis includes the opinion that the U.S. has "an excellent chance" of beating the Russians to a manned lunar landing, adding "with an all-out crash program I think we could accomplish this objective in 1967/68."
• "America's Space Program: Exploring a New Frontier", a National Park Service Teaching with Historic Places (TwHP) lesson plan
• [2] International Space Dominance

Other websites:

• Why Did the USSR Lose the Moon Race? from Pravda, 2002-12-03
• The 1st and 2nd Space Races Compared: Bi vs. Multi-polarity Jagiellonian University, 2006
• Space Race Exhibition at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum
• TheSpaceRace.com – Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo space programs
• Timeline of the Space Race to the Moon 1960 - 1969
• Shadows of the Soviet Space Age, Paul Lucas
• Chronology:Moon Race at russianspaceweb.com
• Space study hobbyists' organization
• Artwork representing the cold war in space
• Buzz Aldrin's Race Into Space: a game that simulates the Space Race, from a GeoCities website
• Artifacts from the U.S. Space Program
• First Space Race--America vs. Germany
• [3]