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What Is The Theme Of Failure Is Not An Option By Gene Kranz

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In the book, “Failure Is Not an Option”, author Gene Kranz tells the story about his life as the flight director during some of the most important space missions in American History. Being an insider during this era, gave Kranz the opportunity to reveal just how unadvanced it was in its infancy. During his three decades long tenure as flight director, Kranz saw up close all of the Space Programs accomplishments and harrowing episodes. In this book, Kranz discusses how the space race between the Soviet Union and the United States was a part of the Cold War Arms Race because of missile technology, satellite coverage, and future domination of manned flights into space. The ability of each country to put satellites and men in space, was directly tied to its missile technology. Since the end of World War II, both countries had invested heavily in their missile programs as an avenue for launching nuclear warheads. Then when the space race began, that technology was just as important for launching satellites and manned flights. …show more content…

This came as a shock to the American people and led to a perceived inferiority in the missile gap between the United States and the Soviet Union. “Our adversary had developed rockets with greater thrust and throw weight, for the military this meant ballistic missiles that could throw a heavier warhead a greater distance than anything in our arsenal.” (Kranz 15-16) Due to the Soviet Union’s rocket capability, they were able to launch sputnik into orbit causing a quick reaction from the Americans. The National Space Act of 1958, and the creation of NASA was an immediate result of desire to combat sputnik and the missile

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There was a real concern that the United States was falling behind in the nuclear arena and this led to gaps in what the Soviets had or did not have. These threats were known as the “Bomber Gap” or “Missile Gap.” To counter the uncertainty, Presidents Truman and Eisenhower both supported the creation of the U-2 and Corona/Discoverer satellite programs. On 24 November 1954, Eisenhower gave the go-ahead to build 20 U-2 aircraft.

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The Soviet Union in 1980 spent 165 billion compare to US who spent 131 billion. The Soviet Union had 1398 missiles while the USA had 1054, the Soviet Union had 950 submarines while the USA had 656 Submarines. the Soviet Union has always been known for being competitive with their military. Document F states that they were first to send a satellite into space, even before the U.S. On October 1957 they sent ‘ Sputnik” the first satellite into space and within 7 years they sent the first dog, woman, and a man into space, before the US.

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From a meeting of President Eisenhower’s National Security Council, a conclusion was reached, “…we could not permit ourselves to be panicked by the Soviet Achievement [Sputnik]” (Document 3). The launch of the Sputnik only encouraged Americans to accomplish more scientific breakthroughs—before the Soviets. Before the release of the Sputnik, President Truman had dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Shortly after, the Soviets had detonated their first atomic bomb in the late 1940s. Since the U.S. and the Soviets had both achieved a level of destruction through the atomic bomb they became engaged in an “arms race.”

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In 1957, amidst the Cold War, the Soviet Union launched the world’s first artificial satellite into space, Sputnik I, triggering the efforts of the United States to surpass the technological advances in spaceflight capability of its communist rivals. After Soviet Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space in April of 1961, the United States became more eager to reach supremacy in what came to be known as space race. However, for that to be achieved, more government funds would be required, which strongly depended on the consent and support of the American people. So, on the 12th of September of 1962, the 37th President of the United States, John F Kennedy, cleared any doubts of the commitment the United States had regarding space exploration with a speech aimed at restoring America’s confidence and convincing the American people to wholeheartedly support a manned mission to the Moon and back in that decade.

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The Space Race was a significant event that occurred during the Cold War. Two countries, the United States, and the Soviet Union, competed for the moon. After WWII, the world knew that technology was developing enough to send people to space, and these two countries, amidst the Cold War, competed against each other to get a man on the moon first. In 1961 President John F. Kennedy declared that they would get a man on the moon by the end of the decade, so the race began. It was originally an arms race between the two countries and they were building missiles and other high-tech military equipment to demonstrate their power to one another and the rest of the world.

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Imagine modern space technology without NASA! History.com states,“In 1958 the United States launched its own satellite, Explorer I, designed by the U.S Army under the direction of rocket scientist Wernher von Braun. That same year, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed a public order creating the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), a federal agency dedicated to space exploration.” NASA was a project designed for the space race, and was created to go against the Soviet satellite Sputnik, but obviously continued afterwards, as seen by modern space missions. One could say the space race did not cause NASA to exist, and that space technology would have thrived either way, but many researchers believe that the launch of Sputnik led to the creation of

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