The Space Race was a mid-to-late twentieth century competition between the Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. The name is a translation of the Russian: Союз Советских Социалистических Республик (help·info), tr. Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik, IPA [sɐˈjʊs sɐˈvʲeʦkʲɪx səʦɪ (USSR) and the United States ^ b. English is the de facto language of American government and the sole language spoken at home by 80% of Americans age five and older. Spanish is the second most commonly spoken language (USA) for supremacy in outer space exploration. The term refers to a specific period in human history, 1957-1975, and does not include subsequent efforts by these or other nations to explore space. The race was both ideological and technological, and it involved pioneering efforts to launch artificial satellites In the context of spaceflight, a satellite is an object which has been placed into orbit by human endeavor. Such objects are sometimes called artificial satellites to distinguish them from natural satellites such as the Moon, sub-orbital and orbital human spaceflight Human spaceflight is spaceflight with a human crew and possibly passengers. This makes it unlike robotic space probes or remotely-controlled satellites. Human spaceflight is sometimes called manned spaceflight, a term now deprecated by major space agencies in favor of its gender-neutral alternative around the earth, and piloted voyages to the Moon The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite[nb 4] and is the fifth largest satellite in the Solar System. It is the largest natural satellite in the Solar System relative to the size of its planet, a quarter the diameter of Earth and 1/81 its mass, and is the second densest satellite after Io. It is in synchronous rotation with Earth, always.

The Space Race had its origins in the missile-based arms race The term arms race, in its original usage, describes a competition between two or more parties for real or apparent military supremacy. Each party competes to produce larger numbers of weapons, greater armies, or superior military technology in a technological escalation. Nowadays the term is commonly used to describe any competition where there that occurred just after the end of the Second World War Albania · Australia · Austria · Azerbaijan · Belarus · Belgium · Brazil · Bulgaria · Burma · Cambodia · Canada · Ceylon (Sri Lanka) · Channel Islands · China · Czechoslovakia · Denmark · Dutch East Indies · Egypt · Estonia · Finland · France · Germany · Gibraltar · Greece · Greenland · Hong Kong · Hungary · Iceland ·, with both the Soviet Union and the United States capturing advanced German rocket technology and personnel. It was motivated by the Cold War The Cold War was the continuing state of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition existing after World War II (1939–1945), primarily between the Soviet Union and its satellite states, and the powers of the Western world, particularly the United States. Although the primary participants' military forces never desire to display scientific and technological superiority, which translated into military strength. Between 1957 and 1975, the ideological and technological rivalry between the two nations became focused on space exploration. The Space Race effectively began with the Soviet launch of the Sputnik 1 Sputnik 1 Russian: "Спутник-1" Russian pronunciation: [ˈsputʲnʲək], "Satellite-1", ПС-1 ) was the first Earth-orbiting artificial satellite. It was launched into an elliptical low Earth orbit by the Soviet Union on 4 October 1957, and was the first in a series of satellites collectively known as the Sputnik program artificial satellite on 4 October 1957, and it concluded with the co-operative Apollo-Soyuz Test Project The Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (Russian: Экспериментальный полёт «Союз» — «Аполлон») (Eksperimantalniy polyot Soyuz-Apollon) flew in July 1975. It was the last Apollo mission, the first joint U.S./Soviet space flight, and the last manned US space mission until the first Space Shuttle flight in April 1981 human spaceflight mission in July 1975, which came to symbolize détente Détente is the easing of strained relations, especially in a political situation. The term is often used in reference to the general easing of relations between the Soviet Union and the United States in the 1970s, a thawing at a period roughly in the middle of the Cold War. In the Soviet Union, détente was known in Russian: as разрядка between the USA and USSR.

The Space Race sparked unprecedented increases in spending on education and pure research, which accelerated scientific advancements and led to beneficial spin-off technoligies. An unintended consequence was that the Space Race became partially responsible for the birth of the environmental movement The environmental movement, a term that includes the conservation and green politics, is a diverse scientific, social, and political movement for addressing environmental issues; for the first time, access to space enabled humans to see their home-world as it really appears-–color pictures from space showed a fragile blue planet bordered by the blackness of space.

Origins

Second World War

The Space Race can trace its origins to Nazi Germany Nazi Germany and the Third Reich are the common English names for Germany under the government of Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist German Worker's Party , from 1933 to 1945. Third Reich (German: Drittes Reich) denotes the Nazi state as the historical successor to the mediæval Holy Roman Empire (962–1806) and to the modern German Empire (1, beginning in the 1930s and continuing during World War II Albania · Australia · Austria · Azerbaijan · Belarus · Belgium · Brazil · Bulgaria · Burma · Cambodia · Canada · Ceylon (Sri Lanka) · Channel Islands · China · Czechoslovakia · Denmark · Dutch East Indies · Egypt · Estonia · Finland · France · Germany · Gibraltar · Greece · Greenland · Hong Kong · Hungary · Iceland · when Germany researched and built operational ballistic missiles A ballistic missile is a missile that follows a sub-orbital ballistic flightpath with the objective of delivering one or more warheads to a predetermined target. The missile is only guided during the relatively brief initial powered phase of flight and its course is subsequently governed by the laws of orbital mechanics and ballistics. To date,. Starting in the early 1930s, German The Weimar Republic ( Weimarer Republik , IPA: [ˈvaɪmaʁɐ ʁepuˈbliːk]) is the name given by historians to the parliamentary republic established in 1919 in Germany to replace the imperial form of government. It was named after Weimar, the city where the constitutional assembly took place. Its official name was Deutsches Reich (sometimes aerospace engineers experimented with liquid-fueled rockets A rocket or rocket vehicle is a missile, spacecraft, aircraft or other vehicle which obtains thrust from a rocket engine. In all rockets, the exhaust is formed entirely from propellants carried within the rocket before use. Rocket engines work by action and reaction. Rocket engines push rockets forwards simply by throwing their exhaust backwards, with the goal that one day they would be capable of reaching high altitudes and traversing long distances.^[1] The head of the German Army's Ballistics and Munitions Branch, Lieutenant Colonel Karl Emil Becker, gathered a small team of engineers that included Walter Dornberger Major-General Dr Walter Robert Dornberger was a German Army artillery officer whose career spanned World Wars I and II. He was a leader of Germany's V2 rocket program and other projects at the Peenemünde Army Research Center and Leo Zanssen, to figure out how to use rockets as long-range artillery Originally applied to any group of infantry primarily armed with projectile weapons, artillery has over time become limited in meaning to refer only to those engines of war that operate by projection of munitions far beyond the range of effect of personal weapons. These engines comprise specialised devices which use some form of stored energy to in order to get around the Treaty of Versailles The Treaty of Versailles was one of the peace treaties at the end of World War I. It ended the state of war between Germany and the Allied Powers. It was signed on 28 June 1919, exactly five years after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. The other Central Powers on the German side of World War I were dealt with in separate treaties' ban on research and development of long-range cannons A cannon is any piece of artillery that uses gunpowder or other usually explosive-based propellants to launch a projectile. Cannon vary in caliber, range, mobility, rate of fire, angle of fire, and firepower; different forms of cannon combine and balance these attributes in varying degrees, depending on their intended use on the battlefield. The.^[2] Wernher von Braun Wernher Magnus Maximilian Freiherr von Braun was a German-American rocket scientist, astronautics engineer and space architect, becoming one of the leading figures in the development of rocket technology in Germany and the United States. He was a member of the Nazi party and a commissioned SS officer. Wernher von Braun was said to be the, a young engineering prodigy, was recruited by Becker and Dornberger to join their secret army program at Kummersdorf-West Kummersdorf is the name of an estate near Luckenwalde at 52°05′N 13°20′E / 52.083°N 13.333°E, around 25km south of Berlin, in the Brandenburg region of Germany. Until 1945 Kummersdorf hosted the weapon office of the German Army which ran a development centre for future weapons as well as an artillery range in 1932.^[3] Von Braun had romantic dreams about conquering outer space with rockets, and did not initially see the military value in missile technology.^[4]

During the Second World War, General Dornberger was the military head of the army's rocket program, Zanssen became the commandant of the Peenemünde Peenemünde is a village in the northeast of the German (Western) part of Usedom island. It stands near the mouth(s) of the Peene river (the name translates as Penne-mouth), on the westmost edge of a long sand-spit on the German Baltic coast. The area includes the 1992 Heeresversuchsanstalt Peenemünde, an Anchor Point of the European Route of army rocket centre, and von Braun was the technical director of the ballistic missile A ballistic missile is a missile that follows a sub-orbital ballistic flightpath with the objective of delivering one or more warheads to a predetermined target. The missile is only guided during the relatively brief initial powered phase of flight and its course is subsequently governed by the laws of orbital mechanics and ballistics. To date, program.^[5]They would lead the team that built the Aggregate-4 (A-4) rocket, which became the first vehicle to reach outer space Outer space is the void that exists beyond any celestial body including the Earth. It is not completely empty (i.e. a perfect vacuum), but contains a low density of particles, predominantly hydrogen plasma, as well as electromagnetic radiation, magnetic fields, and neutrinos. Theoretically, it also contains dark matter and dark energy during its test flight program in 1942 and 1943.^[6] By 1943, Germany began mass producing the A-4 as the Vergeltungswaffe 2 The V-2 rocket , technical name A4, was a long-range ballistic missile that was developed at the beginning of the Second World War in Nazi Germany, specifically targeted at Belgium and sites in southeastern England. The rocket was the world's first long-range combat-ballistic missile and first human artifact to achieve sub-orbital spaceflight. It (“Vengeance Weapon” 2, or more commonly, V2), a ballistic missile with a 320 kilometres (200 mi) range carrying a 1,130 kilograms (2,500 lb) warhead The term warhead refers to the explosive material and detonator that is delivered by a missile, rocket, or torpedo at 4,000 kilometres per hour (2,500 mph).^[7] Its supersonic speed meant there was no defense against it, and radar Radar is an object-detection system that uses electromagnetic waves - specifically radio waves - to identify the range, altitude, direction, or speed of both moving and fixed objects such as aircraft, ships, spacecraft, mountain ranges, radio and TV towers, guided missiles, motor vehicles, weather formations, and terrain. The radar dish, or detection provided little warning.^[8] Germany used the weapon to bombard southern England and parts of Allied-liberated western Europe from 1944 until 1945.^[9] After the war, the A-4 became the basis of early American and Soviet rocket designs.^[10][11]

At war’s end, American, British, and Soviet scientific intelligence teams competed to capture Germany's rocket engineers Aerospace engineering is the branch of engineering behind the design, construction and science of aircraft and spacecraft. It is broken into two major and overlapping branches: aeronautical engineering and astronautical engineering. The former deals with craft that stay within Earth's atmosphere, and the latter deals with craft that operate along with the German rockets themselves and the designs they were based on. ^[12] Each of the Allies captured a share of the available members of the German rocket team, but the United States benefited the most with Operation Paperclip Operation Paperclip was the Office of Strategic Services program used to recruit the scientists of Nazi Germany for employment by the United States in the aftermath of World War II (1939–45). It was executed by the Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency (JIOA), and in the context of the burgeoning Soviet–American Cold War (1945–91), one, recruiting von Braun and most of his engineering team, who later helped develop the American missile and space exploration programs. The United States also acquired a large number of complete V2 rockets.^[10]

Rocket teams assembled

The German rocket center at Peenemünde was located in the eastern part of Germany, which became the Soviet zone of occupation. On Stalin's orders, the Soviet Union sent its best rocket engineers to this region to see what they could salvage for future weapons systems.^[13] The Soviet rocket engineers were led by Sergey Korolyov Sergey Pavlovich Korolyov , (Russian: Сергей Павлович Королёв Sergej Pavlovič Korolëv; Ukrainian: Сергій Павлович Корольов Sergij Pavlovyč Korol'ov), (January 12 [O.S. December 30, 1906] 1907, Zhytomyr – January 14, 1966, Moscow), was the head Soviet rocket engineer and designer during the Space Race.^[13] He had been involved in space clubs and early Soviet rocket design in the 1930s, but was arrested in 1938 during Joseph Stalin's Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee from 1922 until his death in 1953. In the years following Lenin's death in 1924, he rose to become the leader of the Soviet Union and imprisoned for six years in Siberia.^[14] After the war, he became the USSR's chief rocket and spacecraft engineer, essentially the Soviets' counterpart to Von Braun.^[15] His identity was kept a state secret throughout the Cold War, and he was identified publicly only as "the Chief Designer."^[15] In the west, his name was only officially revealed when he died in 1966.^[15]

After almost a year in the area around Peenemünde, Soviet officials moved most of the captured German rocket specialists to Gorodomlya Island Gorodomlya Island is located on the Seliger Lake in the Tver Oblast of Russia. It is 200 miles northwest of Moscow on Lake Seliger Seliger is a lake in Tver Oblast and, in the extreme northern part, Novgorod Oblast of Russia, in the northwest of the Valdai Hills, a part of the Volga basin. Absolute height: 205 m, area 212 km², average depth 5.8 m, about 240 kilometres (150 mi) northwest of Moscow.^[16] They were not allowed to participate in Soviet missile design, but were used as problem-solving consultants to the Soviet engineers.^[17] They helped in the following areas: the creation of a Soviet version of the A-4; work on "organizational schemes"; research in improving the A-4 main engine; development of a 100-ton engine; assistance in the "layout" of plant production rooms; and preparation of rocket assembly using German components.^[16] With their help, particularly Helmut Groettrup's group, Korolyov reverse-engineered Reverse engineering is the process of discovering the technological principles of a device, object or system through analysis of its structure, function and operation. It often involves taking something (e.g., a mechanical device, electronic component, or software program) apart and analyzing its workings in detail to be used in maintenance, or to the A-4 and built his own version of the rocket, the R-1 The R-1 rocket was a copy of the German V-2 rocket manufactured by the Soviet Union. Even though it was a copy, it was manufactured using Soviet industrial plants and gave the Soviets valuable experience which later enabled the USSR to construct its own much more capable rockets, in 1948.^[18] Later, he developed his own distinct designs, though many of these designs were influenced by the Groettrup Group's G4-R10 design from 1949.^[18] The Germans were eventually repatriated in 1951-53.^[18]

In America, Von Braun and his team were sent to the United States Army's White Sands Proving Ground White Sands Missile Range is a rocket range of almost 3,200 square miles (8,300 km2) in area, the largest military installation in the United States. WSMR includes the Oscura Range and the WSMR Otera Mesa bombing range. WSMR and the 600,000-acre Fort Bliss Range Complex' to the south, form a contiguous swath of territory[clarification needed] for, located in New Mexico Inhabited by Native American populations for many centuries, it has also been part of the Imperial Spanish viceroyalty of New Spain, part of Mexico, and a U.S. territory. Among U.S. states, New Mexico has the highest percentage of Hispanics, at 44 percent , including descendants of Spanish colonists and recent immigrants from Latin America. It, in 1945.^[19] They set about assembling the captured V2s and began a program of launching them and instructing American engineers in their operation.^[20] These tests led to the first rocket to take photos from outer space, and the first two-stage rocket, the WAC Corporal The WAC or WAC Corporal was the first sounding rocket developed in the United States. Begun as a spinoff of the Corporal program, the WAC was a "little sister" to the larger Corporal. It was designed and built jointly by the Douglas Aircraft Company and the Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory-V2 combination, in 1949.^[20] The German rocket team was moved from Fort Bliss Fort Bliss is a United States Army post in the U.S. states of New Mexico and Texas. With an area of about 1,700 square miles , it is the Army's second-largest installation behind the adjacent White Sands Missile Range. It is TRADOC's largest installation, and has the Army's largest Maneuver Area (992,000 maneuver acres for practicing military to the Army's new Redstone Arsenal Redstone Arsenal is a U.S. Army post and a census-designated place located next to the city of Huntsville in Madison County, Alabama, United States and is part of the Huntsville-Decatur Combined Statistical Area. The primary tenant organizations are the United States Army Aviation and Missile Command and the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center. The, located in Huntsville, Alabama Huntsville is a city centrally located in the northernmost part of the U.S. state of Alabama. It is located in Madison County and extends west into neighboring Limestone county. Huntsville is the county seat of Madison County, and is now the second largest city in Alabama.[citation needed] The 2000 census estimated Huntsville's population at 158,21, in 1950.^[21] From here, Von Braun and his team would develop the Army's first operational medium-range ballistic missile, the Redstone rocket, that would, in slightly modified versions, launch both America's first satellite, and the first piloted Mercury space missions.^[21] It became the basis for both the Jupiter The Jupiter-C was a type of sounding rocket used for three sub-orbital spaceflights conducted in 1956 and 1957. It was designed by the Army Ballistic Missile Agency , and all three flights were launched from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station and Saturn family of rockets The Saturn family of rockets were developed by a team of mostly German rocket scientists led by Wernher von Braun to launch heavy payloads to Earth orbit and beyond. Originally proposed as a military satellite launcher, they were adopted as the launch vehicles for the Apollo program. The two most important members of the family were the Saturn IB.^[21]

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