The Soviet Union opened a brand new front of the Cold War with the launching of Sputnik (Otober 4, 1957). Often accounts of the Cold War focus on ideological differences between East and West. Technology played a critical role in the Cold War which is often overlooked. Marxists proclaimed Communism as a new, scientific approach to organizing human society. As a result, science assumed an important ideological status in the Cold war. Obviously if Marxism was the optimal organization of human society, the Soviet Union should be able to produce the best science. And Soviet propaganda trumpeted Sputnik as a symbol of the superiority of Soviet science. President Kennedy understood both the scientific and ideological importance of the space race and committed the Unitesd States to land on the moon. Both America and the Soviets mobilized their sciebtific and industrial resources for a race to the moon. In the long run, superior Western technology played an important role in the West's victory. The West's superiority was, however, not apparent in the 1950s.
The Soviet Union opened a brand new front of the Cold War with the launching of Sputnik (Otober 4, 1957). The launching of Sputnik was not just a technical achievement with military implications, it also had ideological considerations. Often accounts of the Cold War focus on ideological differences between East and West. Technology played a critical role in the Cold War which is often overlooked. Marxists proclaimed Communism as a new, scientific approach to organizing human society. As a result, science assumed an important ideological status in the Cold war. Obviously if Marxism was the optimal organization of human society, the Soviet Union should be able to produce the best science. And Soviet propaganda trumpeted Sputnik as a symbol of the superiority of Soviet science. In the long run, superior Western technology played an important role in the West's victory. The West's superiority was, however, not apparent in the 1950s. Communism was at the time an ideology embraced by millions around the world. The Russian Revolution and spread of Communism to Eastern Europe and then China seemed to show that Communism was the wave of the future. Soviet technological achieveements like Sputnik seemed to be further evidence that Communism, central planning, and atheism was the wave of the future.
Goebbels in his World War II propagnda warned of secret weapons. And the Germans indeed had them. The most terrifying were the V-weapons. The German V1 Buzz Bombs could be shot down, but there was no defense against the V-2 balistic missles which soon followed. The V-weapons had been supported by Hitler because of their potential as terror weapons which could strile at British cities. Because of their lack of accuracy, however, they had no real value as a military weapon. The German scientists had developed plans for larger missiles that could hit New York and other East Coast American cities. A Dutch reader tells us, "I have seen and heard the V-2 weapons in 1944/45 when I was a boy of 16 in the Netherlands. Many of them were launched from occupied Holland and Belgium to target England. They were extremely fast, sometimes like a lightning bolt and they made a loud, whistling sound. Quite a few did not function right and exploded in the air or came down in the fields or on houses and buildings often with disastrous results. We started seeing them at the end of 1944 and in the beginning of 1945. Several came down in our neighborhood. Most of them were launched near The Hague in the Netherlands and Antwerp, Belgium."
Werner von Braun and other German rocket scientists after the War were brought to the United States through Operation Paper Clip. Both the Western Allies and the Soviet Union scoured Germany after the War for German scientists. The rocket scientists were some of the most sought after. They played a promonent role in the American space program. The German scientists were put to work in Huntsville, Alabama and other places for the development of the national space program in order to beat the Soviets during the Cold War. Without them the United State missle program would have lagged behind the Soviet program with very serious potential reperussions in the Cold war. Also the United States would not have been able to have put a man on the moon as early as it did. The Russians tried to do that also, but did not succeed. It always has been an embarrassing subject to have used the knowledge and expertise of German sientists. The connection of these scientists with the NAZIs is a matter of conjecture among historians. Some charge that they were committed NAZIs. Others that they were primarily focused on rocketry and space and only the German military offered the funding needed to persue their work. The V-2s in particular were built by slave laborers working in horrific conditions in underground facilities. A reader writes, "I think it shameful that the inventors (rocket scientists von Braun and his team) immediately after the war in 1945 were brought to the United States to be enployed in further development and research of the American space program."
The idea of launching an artifical satellite was not originating in the Soviet Union. The International Council of Scientific Unions (CSU) set July 1, 1957 to December 31, 1958, as the International Geophysical Year (IGY) (1952). This period was chosen because solar activity would be especially intense. The CSU called for the launching of artificial satellites during the IGY to help map the Earth's surface (1954). These plans in the West received little attention outsise of scientific circles. The Eisenhower Administration announced its plans to launch an Earth-orbiting satellite for the IGY (1955). The administration asked for proposals from various Government research agencies to undertake development. The military implications were not yet fully appreciated around the world. President Eisenhower appears to have been aware and interested in them. The administration choose the Naval Research Laboratory's Vanguard proposal to participate in the IGY effort for the United States. The military at the time had the only important American missle programs.
President Eisenhower was very interested in space, His primary interest was the use use of space technology for national security purposes. One of the major American problems during the Cold war was obtaining information on Soviet arms production. This was why Eisenhower reluctantly appreoved dangerous overflights of Soviet territory. Survelllance from space offered the potential to solve tht problem. Eisenhower directed that that both ballistic missiles and reconnaissance satellites be developed on a priority basis.
We see a growing interest in space after World War II, especially in the early-1950s. We note all kinds of indicators of a growing interest in both modern aircraft and space. I remember as a little boy being intralled by Captain Video on our first TV. It was a hard choice between him and Hopalong Casidy. There were all kinds of space movies, commonly facing alienes. Examples include: "Rocketship X-M" (1950), "Destination Moon" (1950), "The Day the Earth Stood Still" (1951), "Flight to Mars" (1951), "Project Moonbase" (1953), "Cat-Women of the Moon" (1953). and "Conquest of Space" (1955). Cars began sprouring of all things tail fins by the mid-1950s. The movies also had Buck Roggers short features. Space also appeared in comic books and the funny pages. I rember as a Cub Scout making a model sollasr system. All kinds of spaver toys appeared including ray guns. I am not sured whst caused this as the actual work with missles did not get all that much publicity. All this began well before Sputnik and the space race took off in the public mind. One might dismiss popular culture as inconsequential, but the little boys of the 1950s were voters of the 1960s willing to support huge budget allocations for the spave race. And some became the scientists snd engineers that took man to the moon.
The Soviets shocked the Western scientific world when they the first man-made satellite--Sputnik I
(October 4, 1957). Sputnik was a basketball-sized satellite which weiged 183 pounds. Sputnik took about 98 minutes to orbit the Earth. Sputnik was a shock to the American public which assumed America was technologicall far superior to the Soviet Union. Actually Sputnik itself was not a technological marvel. It was simply a round sphere cointaining a radio transmitting a signal. Whsat was imprssive was the Soviets had developed a reliable missle with the ability to launch a payload the size of Sputnik. And the Soviets did not stop with Sputnik. A month later they launched Sputnik II (November 3). Their second satellite had an even heavier sattelite which including a dog--Laika. It was a huge public relations bonanza. I can recall as a boy at the time being fascinated with the developments as astronomy and the idea of spsace travel was a subject of some interest.
The Space Race began with the German V-2s and the Americans and Soviet coopting German rocket scientists. This was a competition that received very little public attention in the West. Sputnik changed this. The Space Race in the public mind began with Sputnik.
Eisenhower did not seem to assign much importance to Sputnik. This led to the development of a major political issue which would affect the 1960 ekection--the Missle Gap. Eisenhowe concluded, however, that classified American programs wee ahead of the Soviets. These programs (Atlas, Titan, Polaris, and Minuteman, and the Corona spy satellite) were far more advanced than the Soviet program. The larger payloads of the Soviet rockets were in fact an indicatr of the Soviet program. They had to more powerful rocket motors because theie electonics capability was so backward. They had not yet been able to miniaturize atomic bombs, electronic circuits, or develop light-weight alloys for rocket construction. Inteligence reports showed that the "missile gap", much talked about in the press, did not exist. To demonstrate this, however, he would have had to release cassified data, Herefused to do so despite the public clamor.
At the time the Army, Navy, and Air Force all had largely uncoordinated missle programs. The Soviet launch brought the largely unreported IGY competition to public attention. It was not only the fact that the Soviets launched the first artificial satellite, but Sputnik was huge.
Sputnik was more than 50 times larger than the tiny 3.5 pound Vanguard satellite that America was planning to launch. The implications were obvious. Soviet missles poweful enough to launch Sputnik could also launch nuclear weapons.
The immediate American resonses to the political furor that ensued was expanded funding. The Army Redstone Arsenal led by Wernher von Braun received funding for a second American satellite program. The Army immediately began work on the Explorer project and within a few months successfully launched Explorer I (January 31, 1958).
At the time the large Soviet payload represented by Sputnik received the greatest attention. Sputnik was indeed large and a huge public relations success, but despite its size, there was very little in the way of sciebntific instrumrents absard. Less discussed was as a result of minturization was the fact that the much smaller American Explorer sattelite was a more valuable scientific device. The instruments on Explorer led to the discovery of the Van Allen Belt. This was magnetic radiation belts around the Earth and were named in honor of the principal investigator James Van Allen.
Another result of Sputnik was the creation of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
President Eisenhower proposed the civilian space agency to Congress (April 1958). Congress which was concerned about Sputnik very quickly passed the National Aeronautics and Space Act (the "Space Act") (July 1958).
NASA was built around the alreadexisting National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). Imortant elements pf the military rograms were moved to NASA. This included the Army's Jet Propulsion Laboratory at Caltech and von Braun's rocket group at the Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama.
Another result was the National Defense Education Act.
Vostok was the first manned space craft and the workhorse of the Soviet space program. It was the producgt of a team of scientists and engineers led by the Soviet Union's pioneer aerospace engineer, Segei P. Korolev. The Vostok 1K was the prototype used for six unmanned test missions (1960). Vostok 3KA was used by Yuri Gargaran for the first manned trip into space and the first earth orbit (1961). Soviet Air Force Lieutenant Yuri A. Gagarin become the first man in space when his Vostok spacecraft (Swallow) was launched into space by the massive SS-6 Sapwood ICBM
(April 12, 196). Gargarin and Shallow made one Earth orbit and 108 minutes after launching he returned to Earth, landing near the village of Smelovaka. The design of Vostock proved so effective that derivatives were still being used by the Soviets and then the Russians more than 30 years later for various purposes, including military photo-reconnaisance, earth resources, mapping, and biosat missions. Vostok 3KV was also known as Voskhod (1964) This was an adaptation of the basic Vostok spacecraft to conduct three-man flight before the American Gemini program. Vostok 3KD was also known as Voskhod (1965). It was a the Vostok modified by adding aninflatable airlock so cosmonautd could carry out spacewalks. The Vostok and Voskhod spacecraft proved be reliable spacecraft. They had, however, serious limitations. Vostok like the American Mercury capsule could not maneuver in orbit. Once injected into an earth orbig they only had the capability of ending the otbit. They essentially could only move into a fixed axis. Once the mission was completed the the main engine could be used to slow down or brake the space craft and reenter the earth atmosphere.
Vostock had only very basic instrumentation. Voistok did not have the instrumentation that appeared in American spacecraft, especially Gemini. There was no gyros or eight-ball used for maneuvring.
Vostock reentries were done automatically by ground radio command.
Senator Kennedy made the so-called "Missle Gap" a major issue in the 1960 presidential election. The missle-gap at the time was overstated. The importance of the space in the Cold War was not. President Kennedy understood both the scientific and ideological importance of the space race and committed the Unitesd States to land on the moon (May 25, 1961). Both America and the Soviets mobilized their scientific and industrial resources for a race to the moon.
The Apollo Space Program built on the achievements of the Mercury and Gemini Programs. The goal of the program was to put Americans on the moon. This program was culmination of President Kennedy's commitment to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade. It was an enormous effort. Thousands of workers, scientist, and engineers were involved in Apollo. But this was only the individuals directly involved in the program. One estimate suggested that one out of every 10 Americans were involved in some way. There were many aspects of the program. The most critical aspect of cpurse was the space craft and rocket. Aerospace pioneer Dr. Werner von Braun played a central role in building the enormous Saturn V rocket engines thast would lift the Apollo capsules into spase. An early tragedy marred the program. Fire swept through the Block One Apollo 1 spacecraft (January 27, 1967), killing Virgil I. "Gus" Grissom, Edward White, and Roger Chaffee during a "plugs out" test on the pad. The capsule was then redesigned. This involved a 1 year delsay. It produced a safer spacecraft for the 45 astronauts that flew in them from Apollo 7 (October 1968) to Apollo-Soyuz in (July 1975). Apollo 8 orbited the moon (1968). The project suceeded in putting the first men on the moon with Apollo 11--Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin (July 20, 1969). There were six Apollo missions that took men to the moon (11, 12, 14,, 15, 16, and 17). There would be a total of 12 men who would walkon the moon. Ironically, one of NASA's greatest achievements was getting the Apollo 13 astroinauts back after an explosion forced Mission Control to abort the mission. The Apollo Project cost about $24.5 billion.
In sharp contrast to the Amerca space porogram conductedin the bright light of thebworld media, the Soviet program was conducted in a stange combination of secrecy and propanganda publicity. Missions were not announced in adbance, but only adterwards and if they were sucessful. Many failures were kept secret. Only after Mikhail Gorbachev's glasnost policy did we learn about the failures (1980s). It looked for a time like the Soviets would be the first to the moon. Notable setbacks occured just as Apollo was achieving a series of sucesses: the deaths of Sergey Korolyov, Vladimir Komarov (Soyuz 1 crash), and Yuri Gagarin (fighter jet mission) (1966-68). There were also disastrous tests of the mamoth N-1 rocket intended to power the manned lunar missions. As aresult, the Soviets decided not to put a man on the moon.
The Space Race is often seen in military terms, but there were very real ecomomic implications. The cell phone and internet are two of the many benefits of the space race. Other indistries were significantly aided by the space race such as the comuter industry. Technology today is a very important sector of the American economy and many major U,S, companies such as Cisco, Google, IBM. Intel, Microsoft, and many other high tech companies were aided by the Space Race or utilize technologies that flowed from the space race. One important question is why all these benefits flowed to the American economy and virtually no lasting bebefits flowed to the the Soviet Union/Russia. The Soviets did not land a man on the moon, but they had a very important space program with many major achievements. Yet there are no Russian comnpnies today that are technology leaders like the Americans companies which export high-technology goods and services. This is a stuning contrast. It cetainly is not because there were no competent scientists and technicians. There were many. The critical difference was American free market capitalism and open society contrasted with Soviet Communism and police state resrictions on the use of scientific research.. It would not be surprising to find that one of the two programs varied in their economic impact. What is surprising hat there seems to hve been virtually no generatioin of world-class high technology industries in the Soviet Union.
Navigate the Boys' Historical Clothing Web Site:
[Return to Main Cold War Early Phase page]
[Return to Main Cold War page]
[Return to Main Communism page]
[Introduction] [Activities] [Biographies] [Chronology] [Clothing styles] [Countries]
[Bibliographies] [Contributions] [FAQs] [Glossaries] [Images] [Links] [Registration] [Tools]
[Boys' Clothing Home]