Essay On The Space Race

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John F. Kennedy once said, “We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.” This quote summarized what had been in progress for the past two decades. On the fourth of October, 1957, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R) launched Sputnik 1 into space, unintentionally also launching a contest between the two greatest nations for technological supremacy, also known as the ‘space race’. This race, just under two decades, would transform technology in medicine, communication, safety, and comfort, into what we know today. This is the beginning of the space age.
Prior to the space race, technology in the U.S. could be considered what we would now call primitive. Color television became popular only three years before Sputnik 1 was launched. The first ever credit card was invented by Ralph Schneider in 1950 and video recorders were released only a year before Sputnik 1 in 1956 ("1950s News, Events, Popular Culture and Prices"). At this time, we were really only scratching the surface of what technology would soon become. The space race would soon revolutionize life in the U.S.
The space race all began in 1957 with the launch of the Sputnik 1. This was the first ever artificial satellite launched into space. Sputnik orbited earth for 22 days transmitting a radio signal over the world, showing the U.S.S.R’s supremacy in technology over the rest of the world. The U.S. responded within the next year, founding the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) and two years later founding the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) ("012 ARPA History"). In 1958, the U.S. space program responded with the Explorer 1, the first U.S. satellite in outer...

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...oots. It provided comfort, ventilation, and a better spring in the astronaut’s step. These qualities are now adapted to most modern athletic shoes (Dunbar).
Technologies developed during the space race have helped humans to communicate better, be safer in our daily lives, help us to prevent or recover from disease or injury, and even just be more comfortable every day. These innovations have shaped the world that we know today and are still changing it right now. We thought that sending a man 238,900 miles to stand upon the moon was a long ways, but plans are in place to send mankind to mars, to set foot over 35,000,000 miles away from home. There is no way to see into the future, or to see what we will come up with next to help us on our journey, but a man named Alan Kay, a computer visionary, once said that, “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.”

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