October Sky · The Rocket Boys of Coalwood
The Space Race, 1957 to 1969
The Rocket Boys built their rockets in the first years of the Space Race, when the United States and the Soviet Union competed to reach space first. Here is that history in brief, from Sputnik to the first Moon landing.
After World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union were rivals in what is called the Cold War. Both built rockets that could carry weapons, and both wanted to be first into space. Each side saw its space program as a sign of its strength. The contest drove a burst of science and engineering, and in twelve years it went from a beeping metal ball in orbit to people walking on the Moon.
Firsts, year by year
Each line marks who did it: USSR for the Soviet Union, USA for the United States.
- USSRSputnik 1, the first artificial satellite. It circled the Earth about every 98 minutes and sent out radio beeps anyone could pick up.
- USSRSputnik 2 carries the first animal into orbit, a dog named Laika.
- USAThe first try to launch a U.S. satellite, on a Vanguard rocket, ends when the rocket explodes on the launch pad.
- USAExplorer 1, the first U.S. satellite, launched by a team led by Wernher von Braun. Its instruments found the Van Allen radiation belts around the Earth.
- USAThe National Defense Education Act pays for loans, scholarships and teaching in science, math and languages.
- USANASA opens, created by an act of Congress signed that July.
- USSRLuna 2 is the first spacecraft to reach the Moon, by striking its surface.
- USSRYuri Gagarin, on Vostok 1, is the first person in space and the first to orbit the Earth.
- USAAlan Shepard, on Freedom 7, is the first American in space, on a 15-minute flight up and back down.
- USAPresident Kennedy asks Congress to commit to landing a person on the Moon and returning safely before the decade is out.
- USAJohn Glenn is the first American to orbit the Earth.
- USSRValentina Tereshkova is the first woman in space.
- USSRAlexei Leonov makes the first spacewalk.
- USAGemini 6 and Gemini 7 make the first meeting of two crewed spacecraft in orbit.
- USAGemini 8 makes the first docking of two spacecraft.
- USAThree astronauts, Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee, die in a fire during a launch pad test of Apollo 1.
- USSRVladimir Komarov dies when Soyuz 1 crashes on landing, the first death during a spaceflight.
- USAApollo 8 carries the first people around the Moon.
- USAApollo 11: Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin are the first people to walk on the Moon, while Michael Collins orbits above.
What it meant in Coalwood
Sputnik went up when Homer Hickam was fourteen. In the years the Rocket Boys were in high school, the country put new money and attention into science and math teaching. At the 1960 National Science Fair, Homer hoped to meet Wernher von Braun, whose team had launched Explorer 1; the two looked for each other there and missed. Homer later spent his NASA career at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, the center von Braun led in the 1960s.
After the race
The two countries went on to work together in space. In July 1975, an American Apollo and a Soviet Soyuz docked in orbit, and their crews met. Some date the end of the race to the Moon landing in 1969, others to this meeting in 1975. People still weigh what each side won and what it cost, and they see it in different ways.
The physics behind it. Why does a satellite stay up? How fast must it go? In the course Rocket Boys Math and Physics you can work it out. You can also fire Newton's cannon in our Orbit Lab and build a rocket to reach orbit in the Rocket Builder.
Look it up
On Grokipedia: Space Race, Sputnik 1, Explorer 1, Vostok 1, Project Mercury and Apollo 11.
Next: Try it safely · Learn the math the boys learned in Rocket Boys Math and Physics, a Physics Ladder course.