How The Space Race Changed The World

As decades pass by, people and events continually fade in and out of the spotlight, but certain events will be forever etched into the fabric of history, the history of not only one country but also the entire world. The Space Race, a three decade long sprint for interplanetary supremacy between the United States of America and the Soviet Union, was a series of such events. From the late 1950’s until the early 1970’s, the two competing countries went head to head in order to assert their dominance. The discoveries and victories span a relatively short period of time but, stand as a benchmark of discovery that changed the way the world operates as a whole. The Space Race came during an era of extreme tension due to the continuous Cold War fighting.

Hitler and his Nazi regime focused largely on the creation and the production of extensive rockets. Wenher von Braun, a knowledgable German scientist, was employed by the Nazi military to design and launch the V-2 rocket. These sophisticated rockets were sculpted in order to carry a large amount of explosives, and they were also capable of striking several Allied power bases, including the major city of London. As the war began to dwindle down, and it was clear that Nazi Germany wasn’t going to make a comeback, many of the German scientists, including von Braun, capitulated to the Allied powers. Knowing that these rocket scientists had a plethora of ballistic knowledge, coupled with the ability to retrieve old German V-2 rockets, led to the United States hiring von Braun and his team to begin working on a rocket program in the US. But, the United States wasn’t the only country that was able to acquire German scientists and residual parts. The Soviet Union was also able to use these advantages, spring boarding their own rocket program. With intelligent German technologists at their disposal, the United States and the USSR were both yearning for the development of intercontinental ballistic missiles. These missiles had the capability to strike almost anywhere on Earth, however, in order for these missiles to travel these great distances, they had to leave the atmosphere. The project groups from both the countries concentrated on generating a rocket with sufficient energy to break through the atmosphere, all while carrying a dense warhead. The United States and the Soviet Union, with the help of the German masterminds, produced an extensive rocket sector, with many of the scientists involved striving to use the newly discovered information to help build a spacecraft that could someday be place into