The Race in Space: The U.S. Remains Victorious
As the entire world watched from Earth on July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong stepped foot on the moon. He was not only the first human, but the first American in doing so. The race to the moon ended on that day and the United States proclaimed as the victor among their immediate competitor, the Soviet Union. Over the next 4 years, an additional eleven men would leave their footprints in history, all similar Neil, being American. Since then, countries all over the world have attempted to surpass the U.S. for a chance at being first in space exploration and development. None has been a bigger competitor for the U.S. than Russia. Because of the advances the United States has and continues to make, the …show more content…
Kennedy, began competing for the title of the first country to get a human to the moon. The country’s closest rival would be the Soviets, who created a program to compete with the U.S. Apollo Programs. Their program named the Soviet Lunar Program, would attempt missions to land a man on the moon for a stretch of more than six years, all ending in failed attempts. The first American landed on the moon in July 1969 and the last man to land on the moon touched down in December 1972. (Gugliotta and Goodfellow, National Geographic, Oct. 2007) These three years would be the most important in the United States aerospace history as the only successful manned missions the world has known. Considerable, because of the United States and their monopoly of the exploration of the moon, the country dominates the aerospace industry during the era of the first Space Race. While there have been no additional manned missions to the moon, the next advancement in the world’s aerospace industry can be considered getting a human to step foot on Mars. This new Space Race will involve the top three countries in the industry along with their respected government-funded programs. On August 20 1975, the U.S. was again first in landing an unmanned mission on Mars. Since that date, NASA has completed seven unmanned Mars landings. No country in European Space Agency (ESA) has landed one, including, the U.S. rival Russia. These feats for …show more content…
These private space companies are something only the United States are exploring. They are not funded by the government and do not hold the same bureaucratic restrictions that NASA encounters as having to rely on a fiscal budget that affects the timeline of space projects. American aerospace companies such as SpaceX, Boeing, and Blue Origin have revolutionized the potential for future space missions. In April 2016, SpaceX announced their partnership with NASA on the next mission to mars “Red Dragon”. The goal of the mission is land an unmanned mission on Mars with payloads (weight of cargo, scientific instruments, and equipment) by means of collaborations between NASA and SpaceX making it the first privately funded program to land. Having the private company tasked with taking charge of the mission provides an aspect to the modern-day space race that other countries cannot match. As stated on NASA’s website on “Red Dragon”, the benefits of having SpaceX as a partner includes such as “deep-space communications, data relay and tracking, and supersonic retropropulsion” this creates “the potential for human exploration in the Mars atmosphere about a decade sooner and at a fraction of the cost to NASA for a future technology demonstrator mission”. (NASA.gov, 11 July