SPACE AGE- STAR WAR

SPUTNIK 1

• The Space Age began with the development of several technologies that converged with the October 4, 1957 launch of Sputnik 1 by the Soviet union.

• This was the world's first artificial satellite, orbiting the Earth in 96.17 minutes and weighing 83 kg.

• The launch of Sputnik 1 ushered in a new era of political, scientific and technological achievements that became known as the Space Age, by the rapid development of new technology and a race for achievement, mostly between the united states and the Soviet Union. Rapid advances were made in rocketry, materials science, and other areas.

SPUTNIK 2

• The Soviets followed up with another triumph less than a month later with the launch of sputnik 2, which carried a dog named Laika.

EXPLORER 1

• It wasn't until the next year, 1958, that the Americans had their first achievement in the space race, launching a satellite called Explorer 1.

• A major turning point in the space race occurred that same month, when U.S. President John F. Kennedy stood before legislators in Congress and announced that he had committed NASA to landing people on the moon before the end of the decade.

• A few months later, at Rice University in Texas, Kennedy delivered his famous ''moon speech," where he said, "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."

APOLLO 1

• Just over a year later, on Oct. 11, 1968, NASA launched its first Apollo astronauts into space aboard a Saturn I rocket for the 11-day Apollo 7 mission.

APOLLO 8

• This was followed two months later by Apollo 8, which sent a crew around the moon and back to Earth.

APOLLO 9 AND 10

• In 1969, NASA launched Apollo 9, which conducted critical tests of its lunar module in Earth orbit; and Apollo 10, which all but landed on the moon, bringing its crew within a few miles of the lunar surface.

APOLLO 11

• Then, on July 20, 1969, the space race reached its peak when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon and walked on its surface during the Apollo 11 mission.

• After the successes of the Apollo program, the space race was widely believed to have been won by the U.S.

• Eventually, as the Cold War wound down, both sides agreed to cooperate in space and construct the International Space Station beginning in 1998.

END OF COLD WAR

• The United States and the Soviet Union rose as global superpowers as empires crumbled in the face of resistance.

• The two trends worked together to shape the late twentieth century.

• U.S.-Soviet relations improved considerably during the middle 1980s.

• At a dramatic summit meeting in Iceland, in October 1986, Gorbachev proposed a 50-percent reduction in the nuclear arsenals of each side, and for a time it seemed as though a historic agreement would be reached.

• The summit ended in failure, owing to differences over SDI.

• However, on December 8, 1987, the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty was signed in Washington, eliminating an entire class of nuclear weapons.

• The INF Treaty was the first arms-control pact to require an actual reduction in nuclear arsenals rather than merely restricting their proliferation.

• As the decade came to an end, much of the Eastern Bloc began to crumble.

• The Hungarian government took down the barbed wire on its border with Austria and the West. The Soviet Union did nothing in response.

• Although travel was still not completely free, the Iron Curtain was starting to unravel.

• On November 10, 1989, one of the most famous symbols of the Cold War came down: the Berlin Wall.

• By the end of the year, leaders of every Eastern European nation except Bulgaria had been ousted by popular uprisings.

• By mid-1990, many of the Soviet republics had declared their independence.

• Turmoil in the Soviet Union continued, as there were several attempts at overthrowing Gorbachev.

• On December 8, 1991, the Soviet Union ceased to exist.

• Boris Yeltsin, president of the Russian Republic, formed the Commonwealth of Independent States.

• After 45 years, the cold war ended.

• Historians typically describe the events of the half-century or so after the Second World War ended in 1945 through two separate processes.

• The first was the Cold War, in which the United States and the Soviet Union led rival coalitions - politically active alliances - that confronted each other on every continent and ocean of the planet.

• The second was decolonization, as the people of colonies everywhere sought to gain independence and create their own nation-states.

• To some degree, we can see that these were different trends with different motives.

• The Cold War was a struggle over military and economic supremacy, whereas decolonization was a struggle for political independence and sovereignty.