The Space Race: Anything You Can Do I Can Do Better

It was all about appearing to be ahead during the Cold War. Rhetoric regarding research was really as relevant as the research itself. Kennedy’s speech, “The Space Challenge” is a perfect example. He condenses human history down into 50 years from 50,000. Then most of man’s technological developments have occurred sometime this year. He says, “And now if America's new spacecraft succeeds in reaching Venus, we will have literally reached the stars before midnight tonight.” That was a brilliant speech. America is going to actually reach the stars. And soon. That’s a pretty impressive state of affairs. In a battle of ideologies, it’s about being perceived to be better. For Kennedy’s statement to have anything beyond the ability to stir American imaginations momentarily, there must be science to back it up. Rhetoric and results is a tough combo to beat.

The fact that the Soviets beat the US to space had to be dealt with politically and scientifically. In the same speech Kennedy said, “To be sure -- to be sure, we are behind and will be behind for some time in manned flights but we do not intend to stay behind and in this decade we shall make up and move ahead.” He concedes that we are behind and without missing a beat suggests that it is nothing to worry about, we will Pass them up momentarily. In fact, we really seem more behind than we are because they do not admit their faults like we do: “We have had our failures, but so have others, even if they do not admit them and they may be less public.” If you only knew how many mistakes the Soviets are making, he implied, you would know we are not as far behind as you think. This was all followed up, of course, by putting pressure on the scientific community to run great space programs. And they came through. The US created a great space program. Though we seemed to be behind, the Americans were actually producing better programs. Much of the Soviet space program was just a façade. Their space program served political needs than scientific ones.

The militarization of space was an important consideration as we raced to the final frontier. In the speech Kennedy gave in 1962, he said “We have vowed that we shall not see space filled with weapons of mass destruction, but with instruments of knowledge and understanding.” Despite this statement, that same year he sought to increase the Department of Defense’s budget to $850 million for space programs (“Hooded Falcons” 335). I doubt anyone was shocked at that. Politics is full of lying politicians, and the Cold War was full of attempts to make military programs appear peaceful. The arms race was really about keeping peace, MAD demands it, and MAD keeps us at peace. Nuclear research was aimed at creating functional applications to create a more perfect world, not to explore any more sinister applications. And now, the space race is about furthering man’s understanding of the universe, nothing more.