The space race was an important part of the Cold War between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, and almost all space technology has come from the initial space race. While the Soviets made lots of early advancements, the Americans made it to the moon first. Today I’m going to cover the space race in chronological order.
The space race truly began at the end of World War II. Both the Soviet Union and the United States of American had captured rocket scientists from Germany, and, with their aid, began to start building spacecraft. The first spacecraft was Sputnik, sent into orbit by the soviets. News outlets turned this into propaganda, saying the U.S.S.R. had built a bomb that they could hurl down at will, and other lies like that. This did, however, begin to create insensitive for the U.S. to launch a satellite themselves, which they did.
The soviets then made several advances, putting the first living being (a stray dog) in space in 1917 on Sputnik 2, sending the first man into orbit in 1961, and making the first spacewalk in 1965.
On May 15th, 1961 JFK made his famous speech that would set the expectation to put a man on the moon before 1970. This would basically set the end goal for the space race, and prompted NASA to create the Apollo program and the Gemini program for this sole purpose of reaching the moon.
The next major advance in space technology was when the Americans docked the first two spacecraft together, allowing for more complex missions in space. This would go on to become a very important part of almost every future space mission, including the moon landing, and it was also the entire basis that the international space station was built off of.
The first orbit of the moon was successfully made by the Apollo 8 manned spaceship in 1968. Finally, six months later, Apollo 11 achieved the impossible: setting the first two men on the moon. Following Apollo 11, there were a few more missions to the moon done by the Apollo spacecraft, and the Soviets also landed shortly afterwards. This was the climax of the space race, and public interest started to die down. The most recent moon landing to this date was Apollo 17 in 1972, and we have not been to the moon since then.
The real conclusion to the space race was when a United States Spaceship and a U.S.S.R. Spaceship docked to each other, and the two captains shook hands, signaling the healing of the relationship between the two nations. So the race ended.