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Space Race

The Space Race was a mid-to-late twentieth century competition between the Soviet Union (USSR) and the United States (USA) for supremacy in outer space exploration. The term refers to a specific period in human history, 1957–1975, and does not include subsequent efforts by these or other nations to explore space. The race was both ideological and technological, and it involved pioneering efforts to launch artificial satellites, sub-orbital and orbital human spaceflight around the earth, and piloted voyages to the Moon.

The Space Race had its origins in the missile-based arms race that occurred just after the end of the Second World War, with both the Soviet Union and the United States capturing advanced German rocket technology and personnel. It was motivated by the Cold War desire to display scientific and technological superiority, which translated into military strength. Between 1957 and 1975, the ideological and technological rivalry between the two nations became focused on space exploration. The Space Race effectively began with the Soviet launch of the Sputnik 1 artificial satellite on 4 October 1957, and it concluded with the co-operative Apollo-Soyuz Test Project human spaceflight mission in July 1975, which came to symbolize détente between the USA and USSR.

The Space Race sparked unprecedented increases in spending on education and pure research, which accelerated scientific advancements and led to beneficial spin-off technologies. An unintended consequence was that the Space Race became partially responsible for the birth of the environmental movement; for the first time, access to space enabled humans to see their home-world as it really appears-–color pictures from space showed a fragile blue planet bordered by the blackness of space.

Origins

Second World War

The Space Race can trace its origins to Nazi Germany, beginning in the 1930s and continuing during World War II when Germany researched and built operational ballistic missiles. Starting in the early 1930s, German aerospace engineers experimented with liquid-fueled rockets, with the goal that one day they would be capable of reaching high altitudes and traversing long distances. The head of the German Army's Ballistics and Munitions Branch, Lieutenant Colonel Karl Emil Becker, gathered a small team of engineers that included Walter Dornberger and Leo Zanssen, to figure out how to use rockets as long-range artillery in order to get around the Treaty of Versailles' ban on research and development of long-range cannons. Wernher von Braun, a young engineering prodigy, was recruited by Becker and Dornberger to join their secret army program at Kummersdorf-West in 1932. Von Braun had romantic dreams about conquering outer space with rockets, and did not initially see the military value in missile technology.

During the Second World War, General Dornberger was the military head of the army's rocket program, Zanssen became the commandant of the Peenemünde army rocket centre, and von Braun was the technical director of the ballistic missile program. They would lead the team that built the Aggregate-4 (A-4) rocket, which became the first vehicle to reach outer space during its test flight program in 1942 and 1943. By 1943, Germany began mass producing the A-4 as the Vergeltungswaffe 2 (“Vengeance Weapon” 2, or more commonly, V2), a ballistic missile with a 320 kilometres (200 mi) range carrying a 1,130 kilograms (2,500 lb) warhead at 4,000 kilometres per hour (2,500 mph). Its supersonic speed meant there was no defense against it, and radar detection provided little warning. Germany used the weapon to bombard southern England and parts of Allied-liberated western Europe from 1944 until 1945. After the war, the A-4 became the basis of early American and Soviet rocket designs.

At war’s end, American, British, and Soviet scientific intelligence teams competed to capture Germany's rocket engineers along with the German rockets themselves and the designs they were based on. Each of the Allies captured a share of the available members of the German rocket team, but the United States benefited the most with Operation Paperclip, recruiting von Braun and most of his engineering team, who later helped develop the American missile and space exploration programs. The United States also acquired a large number of complete V2 rockets.

Rocket teams assembled

The German rocket center at Peenemünde was located in the eastern part of Germany, which became the Soviet zone of occupation. On Stalin's orders, the Soviet Union sent its best rocket engineers to this region to see what they could salvage for future weapons systems. The Soviet rocket engineers were led by Sergey Korolyov. He had been involved in space clubs and early Soviet rocket design in the 1930s, but was arrested in 1938 during Joseph Stalin's Great Purge and imprisoned for six years in Siberia. After the war, he became the USSR's chief rocket and spacecraft engineer, essentially the Soviets' counterpart to Von Braun. His identity was kept a state secret throughout the Cold War, and he was identified publicly only as "the Chief Designer." In the west, his name was only officially revealed when he died in 1966.

After almost a year in the area around Peenemünde, Soviet officials moved most of the captured German rocket specialists to Gorodomlya Island on Lake Seliger, about 240 kilometres (150 mi) northwest of Moscow. They were not allowed to participate in Soviet missile design, but were used as problem-solving consultants to the Soviet engineers. They helped in the following areas: the creation of a Soviet version of the A-4; work on "organizational schemes"; research in improving the A-4 main engine; development of a 100-ton engine; assistance in the "layout" of plant production rooms; and preparation of rocket assembly using German components. With their help, particularly Helmut Groettrup's group, Korolyov reverse-engineered the A-4 and built his own version of the rocket, the R-1, in 1948. Later, he developed his own distinct designs, though many of these designs were influenced by the Groettrup Group's G4-R10 design from 1949. The Germans were eventually repatriated in 1951–53.

In America, Von Braun and his team were sent to the United States Army's White Sands Proving Ground, located in New Mexico, in 1945. They set about assembling the captured V2s and began a program of launching them and instructing American engineers in their operation. These tests led to the first rocket to take photos from outer space, and the first two-stage rocket, the WAC Corporal-V2 combination, in 1949. The German rocket team was moved from Fort Bliss to the Army's new Redstone Arsenal, located in Huntsville, Alabama, in 1950. From here, Von Braun and his team would develop the Army's first operational medium-range ballistic missile, the Redstone rocket, that would, in slightly modified versions, launch both America's first satellite, and the first piloted Mercury space missions. It became the basis for both the Jupiter and Saturn family of rockets.