It’s the 1950’s, World War II has just ended, the world is still recovering from the damages caused by the war. However, from the ashes of the war two countries rose to superpower status, The United States and The Soviet Union. During World War II these two countries were allies but after the war they became sworn enemies engaging in the Cold War to see who could get ahead on one another. One of the events sparked by the Cold War was the Space Race, again involving the U.S. and the Soviet Union. The Space Race started after the Soviet Union managed to launch a beach ball sized satellite named Sputnik into orbit around the Earth thanks to the help of Sergei Korolev and his team. This sparked some fear and excitement in the United States, fear because the Soviets launching Sputnik meant that they could deliver ballistic missiles anywhere in the world and then excitement because this was a huge step forward into crossing the final space frontier.
President D. Eisenhower later remarked in a speech he made after the launch of Sputnik, “From what the Soviets say, they have put one small ball in the air.” and “no additional threat to the United States.” About a month
…show more content…
Navy pilot with a degree in Aerospace Engineering from Purdue University. During his early years at NASA he was an excellent test and backup pilot and was later remarked by Buzz Aldrin as, “by far the most experienced test pilot in the Astronaut Corps.” (Collins) One of the reasons Armstrong was chosen for the moon landing could have been because of his huge success as a test pilot and his huge success from the Gemini project. For the mission, Neil and Buzz were going to be tasked with landing on the moon’s surface while Micheal Collins would be staying behind on the space shuttle to make sure it didn’t fly off into deep space and to make sure the astronauts could make it back to the space shuttle safely. With that, the launch date of the mission would be July 16th,