The Space Race in the Context of the Cold War
From time to time, I have asked students to think about American History from the perspective of the great arc of human history. At one time, Rome ruled over 25% of the world’s population and was a great innovator of technology with commercial tentacles that reached most world cultures. It was the world’s superpower. Sound familiar? Out of the millions of citizens and slaves who built this great culture though, how many Romans can you name? How many events from Roman History can you recall? Whatever the number, it is only a fraction of what took place in the 800 years of Roman emergence and world dominance.
So, in 2,000 years, what will people know about the United States? In 1918, World War I, then The Great War, eclipsed all other conflicts as the “war to end all wars.” It was generally believed that the miseries of trench warfare, chemical weapons, loss of whole generations of men, and devastation would preclude another world war. Today, World War I is almost completely blotted out by World War II. Even in a short time, perspectives change.
So back to the point, which Americans and what achievements will be remembered? We can debate historical figures and events, but one event seems impossible to ignore, the landing of men on the Moon. Like the monumental construction of the Great Pyramid at Giza and the Great Wall of China the Moonshot represents one of the truly unique and great accomplishments in world history. Nothing like it had ever been done before. The event heralded a new age in History, not just the beginnings of space exploration but a visible symbol of the technological development on an unprecedented scale and scope.
Since we are not so far removed as students of history 2,000 years from now, I have tried to not only explain the events and technological achievement of the Apollo missions, but also place them in the historical context of the Cold War.
Background
The story of the Space Race has its origins in World War II. Serving as what President Franklin D. Roosevelt referred to as the “arsenal of freedom,” the US came to the defense of Western Europe against Germany for a second time in less than 30 years. The US supplied billions of dollars in arms, clothing, food, ships, and every imaginable type of supplies necessary to fuel the war machines both the Western Allies and the Soviet Union. As the war ended, America was anxious to establish friendly democracies, re-build the war-ravaged world while fostering free trade for the benefit of American industry.
With the end of World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union emerged as the two great military powers in the world. Each country had very different cultures and different aspirations. The Soviet Union had suffered tens of millions of casualties from two German invasions in the 20th century. Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin hoped to make the USSR into a world economic power as well while establishing a buffer zone in Eastern Europe to prevent a third catastrophic invasion from the West. The Soviets imposed puppet governments across Eastern Europe and supported communist initiatives in western European countries as well. Western observers quickly recognized Stalin’s aggressive intentions. Less than a year after the end of World War II, Winston Churchill famously declared that “an iron curtain has descended across the continent.” (see an excerpt of Churchill’s Sinews of Peace speech at Westminster College below)
The Cold War had officially begun.
Though historians wrote that Churchill’s speech marked the official beginning of the Cold War in 1946, it actually began in 1944. In that year, the Normandy landing and Soviet advances to the eastern border of Germany demonstrated to Germans, Americans, and Russians alike that the outcome of the war was no longer in doubt. Germany would lose. Germans with specialized skills began looking to strike deals to exchange their knowledge and expertise for the opportunity to escape a destroyed Germany and in some cases criminal prosecution for war crimes. The US and the Soviet Union were eager to gain access to advanced German military programs such as the ME-262 (the world’s first jet fighter) and the V-2 missile (the world’s first ballistic missile). Both began secretly contacting and recruiting German scientists and engineers long before the war ended.
Western Europeans feared Soviet expansionism. They hoped the US would take an active role but could not be sure. Fortunately for them the US was determined not to withdraw as it did in 1918. The US initiated the Marshall Plan, a generous program of financial aid which helped re-build economies and establishing stable democratic governments in Western Europe. The US also took the initiative in forming the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a defensive alliance of non-communist European governments as a bulwark against Soviet encroachment. NATO’s first secretary-general, British Lord Ismay conveyed European hopes succinctly: “[NATO was founded to] keep the Americans in, the Russians out and the Germans down.” The USSR followed suit in setting up the Warsaw Pact with Soviet backed puppet communist governments in Eastern Europe. The Soviets also created an economic recovery program but instead of re-building Eastern Europe, their policies made these nations economically dependent and weak.
Atomic Weapons and “Cold” Competition vs. “Hot” Wars
The term “hot war” was born out of the Cold War and was defined as an actual conflict between armies and nations. Both superpowers had atomic weapons by 1949 precluding a “hot” war. Unable to fight each other directly, the US and USSR engaged in indirect conflicts in an attempt to increase prestige which might increase their spheres of influence worldwide. Both sides supported friendly political movements, governments and sometimes supported small scale “hot” wars designed to bring individual nations under their wing. World politics, economics and interaction took shape as a bi-lateral communist-non communist struggle for dominance. The US and Soviet Union competed in every sort of endeavor trying to score a propaganda victory that would demonstrate the superiority of one side over the other.
One of the central competitions was over the development of and delivery of nuclear weapons. Bombers dropped the atomic bombs on Japan in 1945 but the distance between the US and Soviet Union required a better method of delivery. Bombers which had limited range and were vulnerable to being shot down before they could deliver their payload. Both sides looked for other means to deliver a devastating nuclear attack that would cripple the other side before it could retaliate. The Germans had already developed a solution during the war. Wernher von Braun and a team of engineers built the world’s first ballistic missile, the V-2, which the Nazis used to devastating though not decisive effect on population centers in Great Britain.
Both sides wanted to create a missile capable of carrying a nuclear payload to the other’s country. Ballistic missile development became a central focus of Cold War competition. These weapons were relatively small and fast meaning they could not be intercepted. From 1946 well into the 1950s, the US and Soviet Union designed and re-designed more accurate and longer range missiles.
Sputnik: The Soviets Take the Lead
Both sides worked relentlessly throughout the 1950s to develop a long-range missile which became classified as intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). The Soviets scored a major propaganda win in 1957 when they launched the first satellite, Sputnik. As Sputnik flew overhead, panicked Americans could pick up Sputnik’s beeping sound on their radios. Suddenly it appeared the Soviet Union had a prohibitive advantage. If the Soviets could launch earth orbitting satellites, they could launch nuclear weapons that could land in the US from the USSR. The Space Race was on.
The US scrambled to respond to the Soviet achievement. President Dwight D. Eisenhower established the National Aeronautics and Space Agency (NASA) and transferred German rocket scientist Wernher von Braun from the ICBM program to work on space exploration. Within a year the US launched its first satellite. In 1960, the Soviets countered by placing the first man in space, Yuri Gagarin. John Glenn became America’s first man in space in 1961 as part of the Mercury Program. 
Kennedy Changes the Course of Events
A pattern began developing, the Soviet Union seemed to be one step ahead of the US. John F. Kennedy decided to change the narrative and the momentum. Thus far, both nation’s space programs had taken small, incremental steps into space flight. Kennedy announced a bold new goal, The US would be first to put men on the Moon. Kennedy had a knack for words and his speech to the American people set forth an inspiring goal with rhetorical flourish:
“We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade . . . not because [it is] easy, but because [it is] hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win.” (see link below. Kennedy’s speech was inspired, one of his best, and worthy of hearing)
Kennedy’s call to arms kicked the Space Race into high gear. Instead of primarily focusing just on ballistic missile development, Kennedy broadened the race to include the conquest of space. The Space Race soon became much more than a technological competition to reach the Moon. Both sides began using their space programs as part of a propaganda war to accentuate the prowess of their nations. Kennedy’s assassination in 1963 elevated his aspirations to a top priority within the American government while receiving enthusiastic popular support from the American people.
Wernher von Braun and his mixed team of German and American scientists took center stage. Von Braun was one of the prize acquisitions for the US recruiting effort of German scientists. He had come to the US to work and successfully developed Redstone and Atlas, two major long range missile programs. In 1958, President Eisenhower made the providential decision to transfer the German rocket scientist and his team to NASA. Though von Braun had spent much of his career in weapons development, his true passion was space exploration. By 1958, he was already well known in the US as an advocate for manned missions to the Moon. He was gregarious and optimistic using every media resource at his disposal from television specials to magazines and newspapers to sell the Moonshot.
When von Braun arrived at NASA, he hit the ground running. Even as he worked on Redstone and Atlas missiles, von Braun had spent his free time planning a new rocket with great potential. A year before Kennedy’s Rice University speech, von Braun and his team had already built and flown the first Saturn rocket (Saturn I B). NASA continued launches using the test flights to determine the necessary dimensions, fuel and capabilities of the rocket itself. The requirements of taking men to the Moon were enormous. A rocket would need to put a manned landing vehicle in a high enough orbit to escape Earth’s gravity. A rocket would need to attain and sustain a speed of 25,400 mph (7 miles per second) in order to break Earth orbit. Such speeds would require a enormous engines which in turn required a huge supply of fuel.
Eventually, von Braun bound five Saturn I rockets together to form the Saturn V rocket. The Saturn V had three stages tipped by a command module and a lunar module. It stood 363 feet tall (63 feet taller than the Statue of Liberty, the equivalent of a 36 story building). When fully loaded, the Saturn V weighed 6.3 million lbs. (fuel for the launch took up over 6.1 million lbs. of the payload) and was capable of carrying 50 tons of space craft, machinery, tools and three human beings. Free of Earth’s gravitational pull, astronauts would make their trip to the Moon in two vehicles, the command module and lunar module. After achieving orbit, the astronauts in the command module separated from the lunar module, turned the vehicle 180 degrees and re-docked with the lunar module. Once docked, the command and lunar modules would begin the actual trip to the Moon. NASA created separate programs for its endeavors using Roman mythology and the Saturn project took on the name Apollo for the Roman god of the sun.
By December of 1968, NASA was ready to make a dry run for the Moon. Apollo 8 achieved an important milestone in human history. This Saturn V launched a manned command module and module that left Earth’s orbit and circled the Moon without landing. The crew, Frank Borman, James Lovell, and William Anders, became the first human beings to leave Earth and travel to and orbit another celestial body.
The Soviets Fall Behind
The Soviet Union also experimented with larger rockets to make their attempt at a moonshot. Like the Americans, the Soviets used German scientists to develop their rocket program. Unlike the Americans, a Soviet citizen, Sergei Korolev headed their space program. Korolev was a brilliant innovator and had early successes in launching Sputnik and putting Yuri Gagarin in orbit. Kennedy’s bold vision though strained Soviet capabilities.
Korolev’s N-1 rocket had similar dimensions to the Saturn V but the Soviets took a different approach to the overall design. Technologically, the design was not as sophisticated or efficient. As a result, the Soviets needed to make a more powerful rocket to launch a smaller payload. Korolev’s design had 30 small engines in the first stage as opposed to Saturn V’s five. Over the course of the 1960s, the Apollo program generally met expectations needed for the Saturn V and the command and lunar modules. The essential Soviet components also checked out with one major exception. The massive N-1 had proven difficult to build for Soviet industry.
The Soviets lost time when Leonid Brezhnev deposed Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev in 1964. The turmoil caused delay. To make matters worse, Segei Korolev died in 1966. The United States permanently took the lead as Saturn V’s successfully completed their missions while the Soviets lagged behind in getting the first N-1 on the launchpad. The Soviets tried to launch two N-1 rockets in 1969 but both rockets failed. The latter exploded just days before Apollo 11’s launch on takeoff destroying the launch facility. The force of the explosion was a testament to the power needed to achieve escape velocity, the engineering difficulties of such a large rocket and the inherent danger of space exploration. The United States could now win the race.
Apollo 11
Early on July 16, 1969, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins ascended the 360 foot launch scaffold and entered the lunar module of Apollo 11 at the Kennedy Space Center on Cape Canaveral, Florida. After running through their pre-flight checks, the countdown to launch began. At 9:39 am, Apollo 11 lifted off from the launchpad and began its jarring rush towards the edge of Earth’s atmosphere. The largest first stage of Saturn V lifted the payload 42 miles into the air before exhausting its fuel. Explosive bolts detached the first stage as the second stage ignited lifting the astronauts to almost 100 miles above Earth’s surface. Fuel depleted, the second stage also detached as the third stage began pushing the rocket to a higher orbit and towards the Moon itself. Half an hour later, the command module separated itself from the lunar module, turned 180 degrees and re-attached itself to the lunar module. Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins were now beginning their three day, 240,000 mile journey to the Moon.
Upon arriving in orbit around the Moon, Armstrong and Aldrin entered the lunar module, nicknamed Eagle, leaving Collins in the command module. As Armstrong and Aldrin descended, alarm bells went off. No one was sure why they were ringing or what it meant but the descent continued. Aldrin noticed the lunar module was off course and headed for a potentially dangerous rocky location. Armstrong took command of the module and safely piloted the vessel to a safe spot in the Sea of Tranquility. At mission control, NASA officials could only listen to Armstrong and Aldrin describe their maneuvers waiting on pins and needles. NASA were not the only ones listening anxiously, an estimated 530 million people, one-fifth of the world’s population, sat glued to their televisions until Armstrong calmly announced: “Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.” The lunar module touched down at 10:17 pm EST on July 20, 1969.
After several hours of preparation, Armstrong opened the door and began his descent down the nine-rung ladder of the lunar module. Armstrong set his feet on the lander pad and then made a historic step onto lunar soil. NASA and the world heard him utter one of the most famous phrases of the 20th Century: “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” For the first time in world history, a human being had set foot on another celestial body.
Aldrin joined Armstrong 12 minutes later and in just over two and a half hours the two astronauts set up a number of experiments, placed mementos and plaques, planted an American flag, and collected soil samples. Returning to Eagle, Armstrong and Aldrin made preparations to leave the surface and return to Collins in the command module for the journey home.
Return to Earth
After launching Eagle back up to lunar orbit, Armstrong and Aldrin returned to the command module, ejected Eagle and began their return to Earth. They came into Earth’s orbit three days later and began their descent to the Pacific Ocean. The parachutes opened and the command module landed as a helicopter from the aircraft carrier USS Hornet awaited the three astronauts. After a medical examination and three days of quarantine, the astronauts met with President Richard Nixon and the worldwide celebration began.
The three astronauts received a tickertape parade in New York City and similar parades in Chicago and Los Angeles. A worldwide tour followed of 45 countries where Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins met world leaders and dignitaries. They concluded their tour with a speech to Congress presenting a flag that had accompanied them to the Moon to the House of Representatives and the Senate.
Legacy
The successful Apollo 11 mission was followed by six other Apollo missions landing 12 Americans on the Moon. The Soviet Union suffered two more failures with the N-1 rocket and finally scrapped the program in 1976. The Soviets covered up their failures stating they had never actually tried to go to the Moon. They claimed they faked their efforts to trick the United States into wasting billions on the Moonshot. Their bitter assertions were widely disregarded. Not until 1989 during Glasnost, would the USSR finally admit they had tried and failed to go to the Moon.
The Apollo missions were a Cold War boon to the United States demonstrating a technological superiority the Soviets could never match. To date no nation has managed to replicate the American success. Wernher von Braun advocated further manned missions to Mars but ultimately never saw those dreams realized. Von Braun died in 1977. The late 1960s were a turbulent and divisive time in American history. The Apollo program provided a rare chance for Americans to collectively celebrate an achievement.
Space exploration has continued with probes and satellites reaching and exploring most of the planets in the solar system. In 2014, Voyager I reached the edge of the solar system and continues its travels into space beyond. NASA probes have landed on Mars, detected water and tracked the weather. With the arrival of the New Horizons probe to Pluto in 2017, NASA successfully sent space vehicles to all nine of the original major planets of the Solar System (though Pluto had been controversially re-classified as a minor planet by this time). In 2,000 years, the legacy of the Moonshot and pioneering early space exploration of the Solar System will stand out as a great achievement in American and human history.
Pictures do not tell the entire story of Apollo 11 so I am enclosing footage from the launch and landing below:
Author’s note: In the article above I wrote that John Glenn was the first American in space. He was actually the first American to achieve Earth orbit. Astronaut Alan Shepard was actually the first American to enter space, but he did not achieve orbit.
Sources:
Churchill, Winston, The Sinews of Peace Speech at Westminster College, Fulton, Missouri, March 5, 1946. Accessed on 3/14/17 at: http://www.winstonchurchill.org/resources/speeches/1946-1963-elder-statesman/120-the-sinews-of-peace.
John F. Kennedy, Special Message to Congress on Urgent National Needs, May 25, 1961. Accessed on 3/15/17 at: https://www.jfklibrary.org/Research/Research-Aids/JFK-Speeches/United-States-Congress-Special-Message_19610525.aspx.
Max Boot, The Cold War,
Wernher von Braun, Crossing the Last Frontier, Collier’s, March 22, 1952, 24-30.
John Lewis Gaddis, The Cold War, New York: Penguin Books, 2006.
Von Hardesty, Gene Eisman, Sergei Krushchev, Epic Rivalry: The Inside Story of the Soviet and American Space Race. Washington DC, National Geographic Press, 2007.
Annie Jacobsen, Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program to Bring Nazi Scientists to America. New York, Little, Brown & Co., 2014.
Michael J. Neufeld , Von Braun: Dreamer of Space, Engineer of War. New York, Vintage Books, 2007.
Bob Ward, Dr. Space: The Life of Wernher von Braun. Annapolis, MD, Naval Institute Press, 2005.
Fantastic article and history study about the space race.. Just one small correction in the end: New Horizons past by Pluto in 2015 not 2017. Not important to the article, i know, but i love that mission so i had to mention it ahah 😀
Thank you for coming to read the article and taking time to post your comment. I always appreciate someone letting me know about a correction. I knew that and for whatever reason wrote the wrong year. I will correct it immediately.