The Space Race

During the late 1950s to the mid 1970s, the US and the Soviet Union, the two Cold War rivals, engaged in a Space Race, a fierce competition for supremacy in spaceflight capability. The Soviet Union achieved an early lead in the Space Race by launching the first artificial satellite into the space with Sputnik 1. The United States quickly followed suit three months later with the launch of Explorer 1. Unsatisfied with being the second to reach space, President John F. Kennedy set his sights for a much higher goal: the Moon. In 1961, President Kennedy announced a national goal of landing a man on the moon by the end of the decade. Eight years later, the goal was actualized with the Apollo 11 mission. In the years between, there were copious technological
For example, one of the necessities of Apollo 11, with all of the electronic equipments on board, was controlling electricity. Computers were tasked with managing the input and output of electricity because of the consistent need to retract and send out the solar panels, as well as the continuous undertaking of checking the electricity (Low). With computers overseeing the management of electricity, it freed the astronauts to sleep, rest or collect data on board without having to focus or worry about electricity. In addition, the computer was in charge of igniting the three main liquid-propellant engines. This was a particularly important to note because given its complexity, the Apollo 11 rocket engines carried a high risk of destroying themselves since they reached temperatures where the heat could create internal damage (Tomayko, James E, et al. “The Space Shuttle Main Engine Controllers”). However, the most crucial job of the computers onboard the Apollo 11 was for it to regulate the heat, oxygen, and pressure (Low). This last function was vital for the astronauts’ survival and well-being. The level of mental, emotional, and psychological stress astronauts would have to endure if they themselves were charged with managing the very
The computers used during the Apollo 11 mission proved to be the utmost important element in the success of the Moon landing. Throughout the 1960s, the computers were instrumental in seeing President Kennedy’s visionary goal to land on the Moon come to fruition. The computers could gather precise data quickly and solve expressions accurately in a way no machine has accomplished before, guide the spaceship across a “tightrope”, automate the most multifaceted and most necessary functions, and prevent the deaths of the astronauts on Apollo 11 numerous times. And to think that the computers onboard the Apollo 11 were no more powerful than a modern-day pocket calculator is astonishing (Saran). The success of the Apollo 11 mission could be attributed to another “giant leap for mankind” and the plinth for the powerful computers to be built by coming