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Assess The Impact Of The Space Race On Technology, Politics, And Society

956 Words4 Pages

Assess the impact of the Space Race between the USA and USSR on technology, science, politics, and society since the 1960s. The Space Race achieved engineering milestones and led to significant scientific discoveries. Although the U.S. made history by landing astronauts on the Moon during the 1960s space race, the Soviet Union initially outpaced with technological accomplishments. The USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) dedicated resources to match the U.S.’s advancements in technology. The Space Race led to advancements, for both superpowers, but mainly bolstered the U.S.A.'s reputation with both hard and soft power, as it showed that capitalism was also innovative and strengthened national security efforts through strategic displays …show more content…

However, the Space Race was more than a technological competition; it was an ideological battle between two significantly opposed worldviews. For the Soviet Union, beating the capitalist United States was a way to assert the superiority of communism and its leadership. On the contrary, the U.S. viewed defeating the Soviets in space as a symbol of the strength of democracy. Launching satellites, sending humans into space, and landing on the Moon became powerful propaganda victories that fed into the broader Cold War struggle between the two countries. Each milestone was a chance to show technological superiority and validate their different ideologies. The Space Race was a highly visible proxy for the deeper clash of competing economic, political, and social systems playing out across the globe. Beating the other side to space exploration first took on immense symbolic importance for both nations in this wider battle of ideologies. The U.S. cultivated astronaut celebrities like Armstrong and Aldrin to project American technological superiority through the guise of soft power during the space race against the Soviet

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