The Race in Space
After the second World War, a pressure gradient was created in the powers of the world as the two most powerful players, the US and the USSR played on the same side, there was not a clear winner. Another war at that time could not have been waged as everyone was drained out both physically and economically. Hence began the cold war. It was fought on many fronts, but most of them were scientific. Research, answers to Universal questions, discoveries and Space. The space race started in the 50s when both of them wanted to dominate the space sector.
USSR was way ahead of US in the initial years. They were the first to launch a Satellite in 1957, the Sputnik I. Later they put Laika, the first dog in space in same year. They were the first to launch a human in space. Yuri Gagarin, in 1961 was the first human to taste space dust (obviously metaphorically). In 1963, Valentina Tereshkova, was the first woman Cosmonaut.
It was quite apparent that the soviets were winning the space war. Sputnik’s launch came as a surprise, and not a pleasant one, to the Americans. In beginning of the space-war, Americans saw soviet satellites above their heads as national security threat thus a special act was passed by the congress in 1958 which led to the foundation of NASA. The McCarran-Walter act of 1952 had already laid the pathway for brilliant minds of the world to come to America and live their American dream. The trade-off being building America and beating the world at everything.
In 1961, President John F. Kennedy announced that America is going to the moon, the mission was called Apollo 11. He said, ‘We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.’ Although President Kennedy was assassinated only a few months later, the dream he instilled amongst the Americans stayed put. Eventually, the space race continued for over a decade until in 1969, when Neil Armstrong became the first man to set foot on the moon.
While the US was celebrating the humongous success of Apollo 11, Soviets made four failed attempts to launch a lunar landing craft between 1969 and 1972, including a spectacular launch-pad explosion in July 1969 just days before Armstrong landed on the Moon.
The success of Apollo 11 renovated the boasting stage for America and they squeezed every opportunity and how. NASA worked on a few more space missions subsequently and over the years collaborated with JAXA (Japan), ESA (Europe), and CSA (Canada) and even Roscosmos of Russia. They developed International Space Station and it still serves as a common research station for the scientific world.
After the first man on the moon, everybody saw the next destination as Mars. Everybody was convinced that by the end of the century the world will see the first man on Mars. But that never happened because the USSR gave up on the space race. Also, because it was simply not economically feasible in that period of time. Apollo 11 cost about $288 Billion dollars in today’s money. Without a threat from the Soviets, the US saw no reason to pour billions of dollars in space expeditions because of which the space industry stagnated. The stalemate brought a standstill in space research.
Now, the Silicon Valley giants have started a new space race. Elon Musk’s SpaceX, Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin are competing against each other to explore ways in order to commercialise space. Not only space travel but Mining activities on Moon, Mars and passing asteroids are also on the cards. The only constraint is the speed of technological advancement. Whether it be like 2001: A space odyssey, or Interstellar or The Martian; the future of Space race is privatised and that is only going to accelerate things as private companies are not answerable to the masses (well except for the shareholders but you get the gist). The next 20 years are crucial and it would be interesting to see what comes next in this modernised Space race.
