Apollo 11 And The Cold War
50 years after the US put a man on the moon, we revisit the Cold War origins behind the space race and how the USSR initially set the pace
How the Space Race fed into the battle of the superpowers
For millennia, mankind has gazed up at the stars in the hope that they might provide a greater understanding of our place in the world. Entire societies were built upon the natural clockwork of the Sun, Moon and stars. We literally worshipped them as gods. Key to the allure of the celestial bodies was the very fact that they were untouchable; twinkling back at us from afar, yet tantalisingly out of our grasp. But what if mankind could indeed reach out and touch them? Moreover, what if one superpower could conquer a celestial body, stick a flag in it, assert its superiority, and use the feat to pursue its own ends?
Speaking in September 1962, President John F. Kennedy laid down a challenge to the American people to do just that. “We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organise and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win.” And while the space race was well under way, with this statement Kennedy had rung the bell of its most important final lap.
At 2.56am EDT on 21 July 1969, 600 million people eagerly watched their TVS worldwide as Neil Armstrong stepped down onto the Moon’s surface and uttered those immortal lines: “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” It was a monumental technological achievement.
Meanwhile back on Earth, mankind was locked into an ideological battle for supremacy, fronted by two world superpowers. At the very moment that the Eagle landed, hundreds of thousands of Armstrong’s fellow countrymen were stationed in Vietnam, immersed in a bloody, fiercely contested and controversial international conflict. Despite the distance, the two events were connected.
A Battle of Ideology
As World War II drew to a close, a new battle of ideology arose in its wake between the capitalist West and the communist Soviet bloc. Nazi aggression had forced an awkward but necessary coalition between the two emerging superpowers, the USA and the Soviet Union. With this common enemy eliminated, the former allies began to look at one another with increasing suspicion.
The years that followed were marked by a series of moves, each side sussing out its opponent, spreading its influence, and shoring up its position on the world stage. There was the formation of NATO (a military alliance between the US and Western Europe) and the descending of the Iron Curtain – each step represented a heightening of tensions and deepening of the divide.
Though never officially at war, the US and Soviet regimes fought each other by proxy, lending their might to those that supported their broader cause. Vietnam was one of many conflicts fought during the Cold War. Indeed, the label itself obscures the fact that a good deal of fighting actually took place, with huge death tolls worldwide.
Fighting vicariously was one thing, but there were other means of asserting superiority. Guns and physical force might help to overthrow a specific regime, but winning people’s minds would require another tact. Proving technological and scientific prowess was a key piece to the puzzle, both at home and on the international stage. Dominance of the land, seas and skies was no longer enough. Space was the logical next frontier.
It’s against this backdrop that the Apollo lunar programme developed. The story of the space race and that of the Cold War are inseparable.
World WAR II origins
World War II saw huge aeronautical breakthroughs. While rocketry was still a relatively nascent technology, its potential was clearly huge. Germany was the first to effectively demonstrate its potency, the Allies all too aware of the havoc that the Nazi liquid-propelled V-2 rockets could wreak.
In fact, Germany’s rocket development pre-dated the Nazis. The Weimar Republic’s original programme had its roots in the Treaty of Versailles. The infamous First World War peace treaty had banned the development of
long-range cannons. So the republic focused on ballistic missile technology instead, to sidestep the restrictions. The Nazis built on this further under the ‘Aggragat’ programme, breaching the Earth’s atmosphere by June 1944 with a V-2.
When the Nazi regime toppled, the US and Soviets raced to get hold of its technology first. Under ‘Operation Paperclip’, over 1,600 top Nazi scientists were quietly spirited away to the US to aid its burgeoning space programme. Included among them were Wernher von Braun and
Kurt H Debus, integral figures in NASA’S rocket development in the 1950s and 1960s. It remains controversial today that several alleged Nazi war criminals evaded justice at the Nuremberg Trials, becoming respected pillars of American society, even rubbing noses with Presidents.
The US also transported several unlaunched V-2 rockets back home for research and development purposes. The V-2 design would become the main template for both early American and Soviet rocket design.
Meanwhile, the Soviet regime had to settle for claiming Peenemünde, the former Nazi Army Research Centre in East Germany, which now fell into its sphere of influence. The race had begun.
sputnik: the race Is on
If the space race was an exercise in flaunting technological prowess, then the US was embarrassingly slow out of the blocks. On 4 October 1957, coinciding with a global scientific event known as the International Geophysical Year, the Soviet Union successfully launched the beach ball-sized satellite ‘Sputnik’ into orbit.
With American anti-communist sentiment at its highest, the news couldn’t have been much worse. Democratic Governor G Mennen Williams summed up the mood:
“Oh little Sputnik
With made-in-moscow beep,
You tell the world it’s a Commie sky
And Uncle Sam’s asleep.”
This was followed a month later by the notably larger Sputnik II, carrying a canine passenger, ‘Laika’ (another first). The US response did little to allay fears. On 6 December, millions watched live as the US launched its own Vanguard TV3 rocket, which made it just a few feet into the air before exploding. The debacle was labelled ‘Flopnik’ and ‘Stay-putnik’ in the national press.
The Soviet Union relished its success; the UN delegate mocked his US counterpart, sarcastically offering help “under the Soviet programme of technical assistance to backwards nations.” The US would succeed shortly after with Explorer 1, but the damage had been done.
On the face of it, the message was clear: the Soviets were setting the pace technologically. At this rate, who knew what the USSR might accomplish? Symbolism aside, there was the very real danger of these technological feats being militarised. Once the stuff of science fiction, extraterrestrial weapons no longer seemed quite so far fetched. Certainly, there was domestic perception in US of a dangerous ‘missile gap’.
Propelled by several reports critical of insufficient defence spending, the Democrats seized upon the supposed missile gap as evidence of the sitting Republican President Eisenhower’s apparent incompetence. How could the military hero have let this happen on his watch?
But what Eisenhower knew – yet couldn’t reveal publicly for security and diplomatic reasons – was that the Soviet rocket programme was in fact far less superior than supposed. American U-2 spy planes had confirmed that the Soviets didn’t yet have the capabilities (the combined technology of mounting a warhead onto a rocket) to seriously threaten American soil.
Conscious to remain levelheaded and avoid unnecessary spending, Eisenhower was in a tricky position that left him open to accusations of incompetence, complacency, or even a lack of imagination.
Certainly, Eisenhower had relatively little enthusiasm for space exploration in general. In November 1958, he bluntly told his Cabinet: “Look, I’d like to know what’s on the other side of the Moon, but I won’t pay to find out this year.” In Eisenhower’s view, it was better to have “one good Redstone nuclear-armed missile than a rocket that could hit the Moon. We have no enemies on the Moon.”
Eisenhower might have been showing his experience as a pragmatic, cool-headed commander, refusing to bow to political pressures. Yet equally, he was perhaps failing to grasp the wider emotional attachment of space exploration; the value to national morale that such endeavours might bring.
The Sputnik debacle did, however, hasten a pivotal development in the US’S space race. In late July 1958, an act was signed to establish a dedicated national civilian space agency. Much existing infrastructure, technology and R&D that had been scattered among the various arms of the military would be absorbed into this new organisation. And so the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) was born.
kennedy sets sights on the Moon
January 1961 heralded the arrival of a new US President, John F Kennedy, swiftly followed by another humiliating Soviet milestone. On 12
April, the US was once again pipped to the post as Russian Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin successfully completed an orbit of Earth, becoming the first man in space and an instant national hero.
There’s a small irony that the US Air Force programme originally tasked with achieving this particular feat (before the formation of
NASA) was titled ‘Man in Space Soonest’ – rather unfortunately abbreviated to MISS. Among the personnel selected for the military-led programme was a promising young test pilot named Neil Armstrong.
If Eisenhower saw space exploration as a mere frivolity, then its
value was better
understood by his successor. JFK’S ascension was key to kick-starting the US’S flagging effort. Public perception mattered to JFK, something he seized upon for political advantage. With the USSR racking up several major ‘firsts’, America set its sights on the ultimate goal. It could not face the embarrassment of its arch-rival claiming the Moon too.
It wasn’t just national pride at stake. It ran much deeper than that. This was about defending the very foundations the country was built upon – affirming the ‘American Dream’. Could it really be that the Land of the Free was technologically, and hence ideologically, inferior to Communism after all?
And so, on 25 May 1961, JFK stood before Congress and famously laid out his intentions: “Now it is the time to take longer strides – time for a great new American enterprise – time for this nation to take a clearly leading role in space achievement, which in many ways may hold the key to our future on Earth … I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth. No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important in the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish.”
In laying down the gauntlet so publicly, Kennedy had to be pretty confident the US could pull it off. Propaganda value aside, there was a very pragmatic consideration in selecting this particular challenge. The technology required was then out of the existing capacity of both powers, putting NASA on an equal technological footing with the Soviets.
As Professor of American History at the University of Southampton, Kendrick Oliver explains, “At the point the decision was made, there were some more obvious next steps: longer solo flights, spacewalks, twomen crews, three-men crews, an orbital spacestation, and then the Moon. But the USSR had the lead and so the need was to set a goal that was sufficiently distant in time and impressive in its own terms to give the US a chance of catching up, getting there first and claiming some worthwhile laurels. The US believed that the Soviets hadn’t really committed themselves to the Moon, so there was scope for leapfrogging them with a highly directed programme.”
the cold WAR heats up
Outside the confines of the space race, the timing of JFK’S announcement was particularly apposite. The Vietnam War, steadily simmering away since the mid-1950s, was still yet to reach its height. US involvement would escalate under his leadership, reaching its apex on the eve of Apollo 11. But Vietnam was a relatively minor consideration when the plans were first announced. A more immediately pressing concern lay much closer to home. Cuba, traditionally a key US satellite, was undergoing a revolution, led by the communist revolutionary Fidel Castro, supported by the legendary counter-culture figure, Che Guevara.
One of Kennedy’s first international actions in April 1961 (just five days after Yuri Gagarin’s triumphant orbit) was the botched US invasion to overthrow the Cuban revolutionaries. The ensuing fallout would lead to the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962, when the US discovered that Soviet missiles had been installed just 90 miles off the coast of Florida – the closest that the US and
Soviet Union would get to all-out war.
The race for the Moon assumed greater potency. As Oliver notes, “Kennedy was primarily motivated by the fear that the United States would be perceived to be falling behind the Soviet Union in technical, scientific and economic terms, leading all those new countries in the decolonizing Third World [and] Global South to identify the USSR as
“When The nazi regime TOPPLED, The US and Soviets raced To get hold of ITS Technology FIRST”
the wave of the future and align themselves with it politically… The announcement of the lunar goal was an attempt to take back control of the Cold War narrative.”
the Apollo programme
JFK’S assassination in 1963 meant he would never see his goal realised. But he set a train in motion and by the end of the decade, as promised, his country would rise to the challenge. With the former-nazi scientist Wernher von Braun at the helm, the Apollo programme fulfilled its task, propelled by the now iconic Saturn rockets.
But, again, things didn’t get off to a great start. The Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov completed the first space walk in March 1965 during the Voskhod 2 mission. Then Apollo 1, an early development stage, ended in tragedy when all three crew died in a pre-launch cabin fire in January 1967.
The programme ploughed on, with the US finally achieving a few of its own firsts – essential steps towards the ultimate goal. Apollo 8 in 1968 marked a notable milestone, with the crew leaving Earth’s orbit, to orbit the Moon for the first time. The breathtaking ‘Earthrise’ images provided an entirely new perspective of our own planet, as viewed from afar. Apollo 9 and 10 set the stage further, respectively demonstrating the capabilities of the lunar module and acting as the ‘dress rehearsal’ for Apollo 11.
Finally, the US was clawing back control of the space race narrative. The development of the N-1 launcher – the Soviet answer to the Saturn rockets – was thwarted by a slow start, the death of key engineer Sergei Korolev, and underfunding, effectively scuppering the USSR’S chances of claiming the Moon. But the Soviet space effort hadn’t quite given up hope just yet. In January 1969, a considerable feat was achieved when Soyuz 5 docked with Soyuz 4 in orbit, with crew transferred between the two satellites.
the eagle has Wings
With the stage now set, America homed in on its target. Four days after its launch on 16 July, astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed the Apollo 11 lunar module on the Moon and prepared to make history, as fellow crew Michael Collins orbited above.
With the US about to claim this laurel, the
USSR made one last ditch attempt to dampen the success. As the moonwalk was in motion, the USSR’S unmanned probe Luna 15 descended on the Moon, tasked with bringing material samples back to Earth. Unfortunately for the Soviets, it crashed on impact, while the US astronauts returned home triumphant. Apollo 11 was the first of six Apollo missions that would put 12 astronauts on the Moon. Effectively, the space race was over.
Into the future
The American space programme may have set out to galvanise the country. But in reality, many Americans were questioning the very notion of the so-called ‘American dream’ anyway. If anything, rather than a positive distraction, the costly Apollo programme had the opposite effect, heightening resentment among those who thought the money would be better spent elsewhere. Most Americans will more readily identify the 1960s with the Civil Rights movement that challenged the idea that the American dream was exclusive to a select group of privileged white Americans.
For some commentators, the Moon landings were little more than a vanity project, but the wider context is important in appreciating their ultimate significance. The space race signalled several historic milestones in humanity – not just technologically, but in heralding an entirely novel theatre of warfare, beyond our own planet.
“A lot of the key figures in the development of the new digital economy have taken inspiration from the Apollo programme,” says Kendrick
Oliver. “But the Moon landings – and the broader civilian space programme – also served as a shroud obscuring the extent to which defence and intelligence agencies were making use of spacebased technologies. Those technologies and the concomitant view that space is the ‘high ground’ essential to military dominance rather than a zone of peaceful co-operation like Antarctica are still with us, in the way that the Saturn V is not.”
“The announcement of The Lunar goal WAS an ATTEMPT To Take back Control of The Cold War narrative”