The U.S. Space Race
Being the ever-dreaming and path-forging country they are still known
as today, the United States began space research with the National
Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in 1958. Robert R. Gilruth
took on the responsibility of researching, testing and facilitating the
actions that began Project Mercury (Launius, 2019, p. 6), a plan with a
mission to have the first man in orbit and would be only the first of
many more missions to come under his technical supervision. What caused
this rush and want from the U.S. to have a man in orbit was that the
Soviet Union had already proved that a man-made object was capable of
orbiting the Earth with their satellite Sputnik 1 in 1957 (London: The
Economist Intelligence Unit N.A., 2017). In brisk succession over the
next decade, these political rivals and space programs surmounted to the
long-awaited goal of space travel and the U.S. landing the first person
on the Moon. Proving that when strong and ruthless minds come together,
working through trials and tribulations, those results would be another
opening door into the scientific field our world knows today.
Robert R. Gilruth
Given the position of NASA's Houston division director, Gilruth and his brilliant engineers undertook the building of rockets and other technology necessary to make space exploration a reality (Launius, 2019, p. 11). It took many years, a few administrations and national dignity at stake for the U.S. to finally be pushed into confirming its policies and plans for space travel to the Moon. On May 25, 1961, President Kennedy delivered a speech confirming that Project Apollo would commit to putting the first man on the Moon by the end of this decade (Launius, 2019, p. 100). Some doubted this mission could be done before the decade was out and if it would be worth the taxpayer's money; nonetheless, teams of engineers, chemists, mathematicians and space lobbyists would spend the time, effort and experimentations to accomplish their goal of a safe take off, first steps and return of the astronauts they would send up there. Launius quotes in his book Reaching for the Moon, "Inside NASA, advocates of the various approaches contended over the method of flying to the Moon while the all-important clock that Kennedy had started continued to tick" (Launius, 2019, p. 153). It would not be until the end of 1966 that NASA leaders announced that the Apollo spacecraft was ready for human occupancy, but tragedy would strike soon. Only a year later, a fire broke out, costing the lives of 3 astronauts who were running through a mock launch.
| The Apollo 1 Astronauts - Honoring Their Sacrifice on January 27, 1967 | |
 |
Virgil I. "Gus" Grissom |
 |
Roger B. Chaffee |
 |
Edward H. White II |
Even though lives were lost during flight simulations, this was the first time the U.S. space programs were directly attributed to these deaths in the public eye and questioned by congressional committees (Launius, 2019, pp. 160-161). "While the Soviet Union publicly denied throughout the 1960s that it was participating in a space race, it competed aggressively to best the Americans" (Launius, 2019, p. 166) quotes, and was a large part of what American society used as the motivations to push past the failures and finally arrive at Project Apollos original destination. It was July 16, 1969, at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, that Apollo 11 spacecraft took off for its three-day trip to the Moon with astronauts Neil A. Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins, the crew who made history (Launius, 2019, p. 176). With their successful landing, sample collection and return, world history was made, and things once thought impossible became possible, and the beginning of a new era emerged. Though today's space exploration is not the same as it was, "After the triumph of the Apollo lunar program in the late 1960s, public enthusiasm and political support for spaceflight ebbed. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) downsized and confined its human spaceflight activities to low earth orbit as budgets shrank and the Cold War drew to a close," recounted (Lassman, 2018, p. 1). However, their experiments, applications, advancements and research over those decades are attributed to modern-day technological advancements, smaller-scale human space travel and further discoveries of the universe.