the arms race and the space race assignment quizlet

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The Arms Race and The Space Race

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1 . Question

The Arms Race was mostly between the USA and which other nation?

2 . Question

US missiles were deployed in which of these nations, close to the USSR?

3 . Question

The Arms race was a race to develop which type of weapons?

• Biological Weapons

4 . Question

The United Kingdom generally used which type of vehicle to carry and deploy nuclear weapons?

5 . Question

Which nation was the first to develop and use a nuclear weapon?

6 . Question

Which of these was a recurring fear of the US government through the 1950s?

• The Bomber Gap
• The Fighter Gap
• The Transport Gap
• The Building Gap

7 . Question

The project to develop nuclear weapons was named after which US city?

8 . Question

Through the early years of the Cold War, which of these nations usually had a larger amount of nuclear weapons and warheads?

9 . Question

On which country was the first nuclear weapon used?

10 . Question

For what did “ICBM” stand?

• Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile
• Inter Country Ballistic Missile
• Inter-Continental Banned Missile
• Inter Country Ballistic Mindset

11 . Question

On which of these Japanese cities was an atomic bomb dropped at the end of World War 2?

12 . Question

13 . question.

At which location did the USA initially test nuclear weapons?

• The Bikini Atoll
• The Marshall Islands
• The Falkland Islands
• The Isle of Mull

14 . Question

Sovet nuclear development had been held back by a lack of which raw material?

15 . Question

In which year was the first Hydrogen bomb tested?

16 . Question

Which of these measurements was used to measure the effectiveness of nuclear weapons?

17 . Question

Which of these was the usual delivery method for nuclear warheads?

18 . Question

For what did “MAD” stand?

• Mutually Assured Destruction
• Mutual Active Detonation
• Massive Actual Detonation
• Mutual Activated Destruction

19 . Question

Which of these did not become a nuclear power during the early Cold War?

• West Germany

20 . Question

Soviet missiles in which of these countries led to a major Cold War crisis?

21 . Question

The Arms Race was mostly between the USSR and which other nation?

22 . Question

Which of these treaties limited the size of superpower nuclear arsenals?

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25.3: The Arms Buildup, the Space Race, and Technological Advancement

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The world was never the same after the United States leveled Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 with atomic bombs. Not only had perhaps 180,000 civilians been killed, the nature of warfare was forever changed. The Soviets accelerated their nuclear research, expedited in no small part by “atom spies” such as Klaus Fuchs, who had stolen nuclear secrets from the Americans’ secret Manhattan Project. Soviet scientists successfully tested an atomic bomb on August 29, 1949, years before American officials had estimated they would. This unexpectedly quick Russian success not only caught the United States off guard but alarmed the Western world and propelled a nuclear arms race between the United States and the USSR.

The United States detonated the first thermonuclear weapon, or hydrogen bomb (using fusion explosives of theoretically limitless power) on November 1, 1952. The blast measured over ten megatons and generated an inferno five miles wide with a mushroom cloud twenty-five miles high and a hundred miles across. The irradiated debris—fallout—from the blast circled the earth, occasioning international alarm about the effects of nuclear testing on human health and the environment. It only hastened the arms race, with each side developing increasingly advanced warheads and delivery systems. The USSR successfully tested a hydrogen bomb in 1953, and soon thereafter Eisenhower announced a policy of “massive retaliation.” The United States would henceforth respond to threats or acts of aggression with perhaps its entire nuclear might. Both sides, then, would theoretically be deterred from starting a war, through the logic of mutually assured destruction (MAD). J. Robert Oppenheimer, director of Los Alamos nucelear laboratory that developed the first nuclear bomb, likened the state of “nuclear deterrence” between the United States and the USSR to “two scorpions in a bottle, each capable of killing the other,” but only by risking their own lives. 21

Fears of nuclear war produced a veritable atomic culture. Films such as Godzilla , On the Beach , Fail-Safe , and Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb plumbed the depths of American anxieties with plots featuring radioactive monsters, nuclear accidents, and doomsday scenarios. Antinuclear protests in the United States and abroad warned against the perils of nuclear testing and highlighted the likelihood that a thermonuclear war would unleash a global environmental catastrophe. Yet at the same time, peaceful nuclear technologies, such as fission- and fusion-based energy, seemed to herald a utopia of power that would be clean, safe, and “too cheap to meter.” In 1953, Eisenhower proclaimed at the UN that the United States would share the knowledge and means for other countries to use atomic power. Henceforth, “the miraculous inventiveness of man shall not be dedicated to his death, but consecrated to his life.” The “Atoms for Peace” speech brought about the establishment of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), along with worldwide investment in this new economic sector. 22

As Germany fell at the close of World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union each sought to acquire elements of the Nazi’s V-2 superweapon program. A devastating rocket that had terrorized England, the V-2 was capable of delivering its explosive payload up to a distance of nearly six hundred miles, and both nations sought to capture the scientists, designs, and manufacturing equipment to make it work. A former top German rocket scientist, Wernher von Braun, became the leader of the American space program; the Soviet Union’s program was secretly managed by former prisoner Sergei Korolev. After the end of the war, American and Soviet rocket engineering teams worked to adapt German technology in order to create an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). The Soviets achieved success first. They even used the same launch vehicle on October 4, 1957, to send Sputnik 1, the world’s first human-made satellite, into orbit. It was a decisive Soviet propaganda victory. 23

In response, the U.S. government rushed to perfect its own ICBM technology and launch its own satellites and astronauts into space. In 1958, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) was created as a successor to the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). Initial American attempts to launch a satellite into orbit using the Vanguard rocket suffered spectacular failures, heightening fears of Soviet domination in space. While the American space program floundered, on September 13, 1959, the Soviet Union’s Luna 2 capsule became the first human-made object to touch the moon. The “race for survival,” as it was called by the New York Times , reached a new level. 24 The Soviet Union successfully launched a pair of dogs (Belka and Strelka) into orbit and returned them to Earth while the American Mercury program languished behind schedule. Despite countless failures and one massive accident that killed nearly one hundred Soviet military and rocket engineers, Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin was launched into orbit on April 12, 1961. American astronaut Alan Shepard accomplished a suborbital flight in the Freedom 7 capsule on May 5. The United States had lagged behind, and John Kennedy would use America’s losses in the “space race” to bolster funding for a moon landing.

While outer space captivated the world’s imagination, the Cold War still captured its anxieties. The ever-escalating arms race continued to foster panic. In the early 1950s, the Federal Civil Defense Administration (FCDA) began preparing citizens for the worst. Schoolchildren were instructed, via a film featuring Bert the Turtle, to “duck and cover” beneath their desks in the event of a thermonuclear war. 25

Although it took a backseat to space travel and nuclear weapons, the advent of modern computing was yet another major Cold War scientific innovation, the effects of which were only just beginning to be understood. In 1958, following the humiliation of the Sputnik launches, Eisenhower authorized the creation of an Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) housed within the Department of Defense (later changed to DARPA). As a secretive military research and development operation, ARPA was tasked with funding and otherwise overseeing the production of sensitive new technologies. Soon, in cooperation with university-based computer engineers, ARPA would develop the world’s first system of “network packing switches,” and computer networks would begin connecting to one another.

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The Space Race

By: History.com Editors

Updated: February 21, 2020 | Original: February 22, 2010

After World War II drew to a close in the mid-20th century, a new conflict began. Known as the Cold War, this battle pitted the world’s two great powers—the democratic, capitalist United States and the communist Soviet Union—against each other. Beginning in the late 1950s, space became another dramatic arena for this competition, as each side sought to prove the superiority of its technology, its military firepower and–by extension–its political-economic system.

Causes of the Space Race

By the mid-1950s, the U.S.-Soviet Cold War had worked its way into the fabric of everyday life in both countries, fueled by the arms race and the growing threat of nuclear weapons, wide-ranging espionage and counter-espionage between the two countries, war in Korea and a clash of words and ideas carried out in the media. These tensions would continue throughout the space race, exacerbated by such events as the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961, the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 and the outbreak of war in Southeast Asia.

Space exploration served as another dramatic arena for Cold War competition. On October 4, 1957, a Soviet R-7 intercontinental ballistic missile launched Sputnik (Russian for “traveler”), the world’s first artificial satellite and the first man-made object to be placed into the Earth’s orbit. Sputnik’s launch came as a surprise, and not a pleasant one, to most Americans. In the United States, space was seen as the next frontier, a logical extension of the grand American tradition of exploration, and it was crucial not to lose too much ground to the Soviets. In addition, this demonstration of the overwhelming power of the R-7 missile–seemingly capable of delivering a nuclear warhead into U.S. air space–made gathering intelligence about Soviet military activities particularly urgent.

Did you know? After Apollo 11 landed on the moon's surface in July 1969, six more Apollo missions followed by the end of 1972. Arguably the most famous was Apollo 13, whose crew managed to survive an explosion of the oxygen tank in their spacecraft's service module on the way to the moon.

NASA Is Created

In 1958, the United States launched its own satellite, Explorer I, designed by the U.S. Army under the direction of rocket scientist Wernher von Braun . That same year, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed a public order creating the National Aeronautics and Space Administration ( NASA ), a federal agency dedicated to space exploration.

Eisenhower also created two national security-oriented space programs that would operate simultaneously with NASA’s program. The first, spearheaded by the U.S. Air Force, dedicated itself to exploiting the military potential of space. The second, led by the Central Intelligence Agency ( CIA ), the Air Force and a new organization called the National Reconnaissance Office (the existence of which was kept classified until the early 1990s) was code-named Corona; it would use orbiting satellites to gather intelligence on the Soviet Union and its allies.

Space Race Heats Up: Men (And Chimps) Orbit Earth

In 1959, the Soviet space program took another step forward with the launch of Luna 2, the first space probe to hit the moon. In April 1961, the Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first person to orbit Earth , traveling in the capsule-like spacecraft Vostok 1. For the U.S. effort to send a man into space, dubbed Project Mercury, NASA engineers designed a smaller, cone-shaped capsule far lighter than Vostok; they tested the craft with chimpanzees  and held a final test flight in March 1961 before the Soviets were able to pull ahead with Gagarin’s launch. On May 5, astronaut Alan Shepard became the first American in space (though not in orbit).

Later that May, President John F. Kennedy made the bold, public claim that the U.S. would land a man on the moon before the end of the decade. In February 1962, John Glenn became the first American to orbit Earth, and by the end of that year, the foundations of NASA’s lunar landing program–dubbed Project Apollo –were in place.

Achievements of Apollo

From 1961 to 1964, NASA’s budget was increased almost 500 percent, and the lunar landing program eventually involved some 34,000 NASA employees and 375,000 employees of industrial and university contractors. Apollo suffered a setback in January 1967, when three astronauts were killed after their spacecraft caught fire during a launch simulation. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union’s lunar landing program proceeded tentatively, partly due to internal debate over its necessity and to the untimely death (in January 1966) of Sergey Korolyov, chief engineer of the Soviet space program.

December 1968 saw the launch of Apollo 8, the first manned space mission to orbit the moon, from NASA’s massive launch facility on Merritt Island, near Cape Canaveral, Florida . On July 16, 1969, U.S. astronauts Neil Armstrong , Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin and Michael Collins set off on the Apollo 11 space mission, the first lunar landing attempt. After landing successfully on July 20, Armstrong became the first man to walk on the moon’s surface; he famously called the momen t “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”

Who Won the Space Race?

By landing on the moon, the United States effectively “won” the space race that had begun with Sputnik’s launch in 1957. For their part, the Soviets made four failed attempts to launch a lunar landing craft between 1969 and 1972, including a spectacular launch-pad explosion in July 1969. From beginning to end, the American public’s attention was captivated by the space race, and the various developments by the Soviet and U.S. space programs were heavily covered in the national media. This frenzy of interest was further encouraged by the new medium of television. Astronauts came to be seen as the ultimate American heroes, and earth-bound men and women seemed to enjoy living vicariously through them. Soviets, in turn, were pictured as the ultimate villains, with their massive, relentless efforts to surpass America and prove the power of the communist system.

With the conclusion of the space race, U.S. government interest in lunar missions waned after the early 1970s. In 1975, the joint Apollo-Soyuz mission sent three U.S. astronauts into space aboard an Apollo spacecraft that docked in orbit with a Soviet-made Soyuz vehicle. When the commanders of the two crafts officially greeted each other, their “ handshake in space ” served to symbolize the gradual improvement of U.S.-Soviet relations in the late Cold War era.

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The Space Race & Arms Race

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• 1. Multiple Choice Edit 20 seconds 1 pt Which countries competed in the Space and Arms Race? US & Cuba Japan & Vietnam USSR & US North & South Korea
• 2. Multiple Choice Edit 20 seconds 1 pt Which country launched the first satellite (Sputnik)? USSR Cuba Japan US
• 3. Multiple Choice Edit 20 seconds 1 pt What was the first satellite in space? Explorer Sputnik Fat Man Little Boy
• 4. Multiple Choice Edit 20 seconds 1 pt What does N.A.S.A stand for? National Aeronautics and Space Administration North Atlantic Treaty Organization Nuclear Arms Society Alliance
• 5. Multiple Choice Edit 20 seconds 1 pt N.A.S.A was developed for... Competitive race against Soviets Economical race against Soviets Radiological race against soviets
• 6. Multiple Choice Edit 20 seconds 1 pt Which of the following could (if launched) lead to the destruction of the world? Atomic Bombs Cannons Missiles None of the above
• 7. Multiple Choice Edit 20 seconds 1 pt What was the Space Race? The US and the USSR competed economically The US and the USSR competed by building nuclear weapons The US and the USSR competed for supremacy for spaceflight capability  The race for supremacy in space by the USSR and Germany
• 8. Multiple Choice Edit 20 seconds 1 pt From what years did the Space and Arms race last? 1948 - 2000 1950 - 1991 1939 - 1945  1929 - 1939
• 9. Multiple Choice Edit 20 seconds 1 pt What were the military alliances during the Arms and Space Race? USSR Warsaw Pact US: NATO USSR: SEATO US: United Nations USSR:  United Nations US: START 1 None of the above
• 10. Multiple Choice Edit 20 seconds 1 pt Sputnik was launched by... USSR US China Britain
• 11. Multiple Choice Edit 20 seconds 1 pt What was the Space Race? A race to get into space between the US and the USSR A competitive race between China and the US during the Cold War. A competitive race between the US and the Britain during the Cold War
• 12. Multiple Choice Edit 30 seconds 1 pt Which of the following was a direct result of the 1957 launch of Sputnik? The US began a period of technology sharing with the USSR The US Gov't founded a federal agency dedicated to space exploration The USSR was unable to collect images of the US from space The USSR collapsed because of economic competition
• 13. Multiple Choice Edit 30 seconds 1 pt Which country had the first man in space? USA USSR (Soviet Union) China Germany
• 14. Multiple Choice Edit 30 seconds 1 pt Technologies that were created for space exploration were eventually incorporated into everyday life raising our standard of living. True  False
• 15. Multiple Choice Edit 20 seconds 1 pt When did America land on the moon? May 28,1968 July 21,1968 July 20,1969 July 20, 1976
• 16. Multiple Choice Edit 30 seconds 1 pt Why was America worried about Russia's launch of Sputnik?  They thought they can launch nuclear missiles if they can launch something into space. They thought people would want to leave earth and go somewhere else. Everyone would want to become russian The world was gonna get bombed by russia.
• 17. Multiple Choice Edit 30 seconds 1 pt The space race began when the the United States launched the first satellite. TRUE FALSE
• 18. Multiple Choice Edit 30 seconds 1 pt Nuclear weapons were used a deterrent of war. TRUE FALSE
• 19. Multiple Choice Edit 30 seconds 1 pt The launch Sputnik led to increased U.S. spending in technology and education in math and science. TRUE FALSE
• 20. Multiple Choice Edit 30 seconds 1 pt An "arms race" can be described as ... a race between countries to defeat another country in war a race between nations to acquire the most powerful weapons a race between states to build up their own militias a race between nations to see who can have the largest military
• 21. Multiple Choice Edit 30 seconds 1 pt After WWII the US and USSR arose as the world's only two... Superpowers Allies Communist Nations Democratic Nations

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COLORADO SPRINGS – It’s hard to imagine how the world’s economies and military forces would operate without unfettered access to services provided by satellites in space. But as space becomes increasingly important to terrestrial activities, the tools and weapons available to disrupt and damage satellites are proliferating around the world, according to two reports released April 4.

“The existence of counterspace capabilities is not new, but the circumstances surrounding them are,” says the 2022 edition of the Secure World Foundation’s “Global Counterspace Capabilities: An Open Source Assessment.”  

“Today there are increased incentives for development, and potential use, of offensive counterspace capabilities. There are also greater potential consequences from their widespread use that could have global repercussions well beyond the military, as huge parts of the global economy and society are increasingly reliant on space applications,” the report says. 

Brian Weeden, director of program planning at the Secure World Foundation and one of the editors of the report, said the broad theme this year is “proliferation.” Previously only a handful of nations had space weapons. “We just keep adding more countries every year,” he said. Based on open-source information, this year’s report details the counterspace capabilities of the United States, Russia, China, India, Australia, France, Iran, Japan, North Korea, South Korea and the United Kingdom.

A separate report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Space Threat Assessment 2022 , also uses open-source information to track the developments of counterspace weapons that threaten U.S. national security interests in space.

It wasn’t long ago that there was a duopoly in space: the United States and Russia, Susan Gordon, former principal deputy director of national intelligence, wrote in the introduction to the CSIS report. 

This is a new era where space has become the “domain in which every interest of an adversary or competitor is affected,” Gordon noted.

China was once an afterthought in the space race, she added. This past year China launched the most satellites of any nation, “demonstrated its intention to project hard and soft power through the growth in on-orbit military support capabilities, and grabbed our attention and imagination with its counterspace demonstrations ranging from hypersonic missile launches to co-orbital rendezvous with other satellites.”

Russia, the earliest innovator in space, “re-grabbed our attention with its direct-ascent anti-satellite test that created a threatening debris field as well as apparent GPS jamming in Ukraine that showed how counterspace is being integrated into combined operations,” Gordon said. 

“The proliferation of international and commercial vehicles on orbit, while presaging a new era of space use for every aspect of governmental, business, and societal advance, will demand attention on the responsible use of space as a shared environment.”

Weeden said that of all the weapons that could be used to take down satellites, the most concerning today are cyberattacks because they are relatively easy to pull off, as seen in the February 24 attack against Viasat’s KA-SAT network that interrupted satellite broadband service in Ukraine just as Russian forces began invading the country. 

“The Viasat attack is a very interesting event,” Weeden told reporters. “It shows that attacks often are not against the satellites but the ground system, in this case the modems used to send and receive data.”

Todd Harrison, CSIS senior fellow and co-author of the threat assessment report, noted that such cyberattacks “are not physically destructive, nobody’s life is at risk so they are viewed as the type of attack anybody can do with impunity.”

Sandra Erwin

Sandra Erwin writes about military space programs, policy, technology and the industry that supports this sector. She has covered the military, the Pentagon, Congress and the defense industry for nearly two decades as editor of NDIA’s National Defense... More by Sandra Erwin

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