Who won the space race? - Jeff Steers
View full lesson: http://ed.ted.com/lessons/what-was-the-point-of-the-space-race-jeff-steers On October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union launched the satellite Sputnik ...
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On October 4, 1957, the world watched in awe and fear as the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the world's first man-made satellite, into space. This little metal ball, smaller than two feet in diameter, launched a space race between the U.S. and U.S.S.R. that would last for eighteen years and change the world as we know it. Sputnik was actually not the first piece of human technology to enter space. That superlative goes to the V-2 rocket used by Germany in missile attacks against Allied cities as a last-ditch effort in the final years of World War II. It wasn't very effective, but, at the end of the war, both the U.S. and U.S.S.R. had captured the technology and the scientists that had developed it and began using them for their own projects. And by August 1957, th...
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On October 4, 1957, the world watched in awe and fear as the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the world's first man-made satellite, into space. This little metal ball, smaller than two feet in diameter, launched a space race between the U.S. and U.S.S.R. that would last for eighteen years and change the world as we know it. Sputnik was actually not the first piece of human technology to enter space. That superlative goes to the V-2 rocket used by Germany in missile attacks against Allied cities as a last-ditch effort in the final years of World War II. It wasn't very effective, but, at the end of the war, both the U.S. and U.S.S.R. had captured the technology and the scientists that had developed it and began using them for their own projects. And by August 1957, th...
