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The Space Race In The 1960's

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The 1950’s Space Race One of the bigger events that happened during the 1950’s and 1960’s would have to be the Space Race between the United States and the Soviet Union. At the time the two countries were in what was called the Cold War, this was a race to have an advantage over the other country and have something the other did not. They were trying to out doing each other with atomic weapons to intimidate each other, then the countries realized the huge advantages of having technology in space and the possibilities that comes with it. Both countries immediately got to work trying to get as much to space and the moon with as much success as possible. T
The Soviet Union had the first big breakthrough on October 4, 1957 when they launched …show more content…

Both countries had to go through a lot of trial and error with most of their mistakes coming from experimenting with something they know very little about. The Soviets had the early lead over the Americans and they had just a fraction of the funding that the Americans were pouring into the research and development of there program. Americans had one of their big setbacks when three astronauts were killed in a launch simulation because there craft caught on fire and they did not have enough time to get out before the fire got to them on January 1967. The Soviets had one of their biggest setbacks in January 1966 when the chief engineer of the space program died, along with debate within the country weather the whole operation was worth the time and money. Just shortly after their first big setback the Soviets put themselves down again when on July 1967 Vladimir Komarov died when the spacecraft he was in failed to successfully deploy its parachutes on reentry, which lowered the morale of the Soviets program. Those were all the notable setbacks that happened before the Americans put men on the moon and “won” the …show more content…

The “war” they were in forced them to rush out the new technologies because both sides didn't want to give the other side an advantage. With the frantic attempts at making the new inventions it came with big mistakes the Americans lost three astronauts due to a fire cause by electrical wiring and the Soviets lost a man due to faulty parachutes on his craft. Even through the mistakes both sides pushed on till the race was “won” by the Americans and the Soviets stopped putting as much resources into a manned moon landing and into satellite research. That is when the Americans realized they have beat the Soviets in the race, when the race ended the relationship of the countries started improving and moving closer to friends and not

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