The Space Race And Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBM's)
Notes
- In 1957 the Soviets launch the first Earth-orbiting satellite named Sputnik.
- About the size of a basketball and only made beeps
- People feared that atomic weapons would soon be delivered without airplanes
- This gave the USSR an upper hand and they began to demand concesssions
- (ICBM) Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile
- MIRVs (Multiple Independently Targeted Re-entry Vehicles)
- Nuclear submarines
- M.A.D. (Mutually Assured Destruction)
- Pre-emptive Strike
- SAC (Strategic Air Command) planes flying 24 hours a day
Summary
In 1957, The soviets launched the first Earth-orbiting satellite into the atmosphere, and it was called Sputnik. it was only about the size of a basketball, but it made some rather scary beeping noises, and it sparked the space race even further. The USSR beat the Americans to basically everything in this race, except for actually landing a person on the moon. the ICBM's as well as MIRV's, were nuclear death machines, created by both the Americans and the Russians. They were missile launching systems that could destroy any major city they wanted to. This led to the theory of M.A.D, (Mutually assured destruction), which was the concept of completely destroying each other if the Russian and the Americans chose to fire nuclear weapons at each other.
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Subjunctive Question
Do you think that the American space landing actually happened? Or was it a conspiracy?
Political Cartoon
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Quote
"A human being is the best computer available to place in a spacecraft. . . It is also the only one that can be mass produced with unskilled labor."
- Wernher Von Braun