Today marks the 60th anniversary of John Glenn becoming the first American to orbit the Earth in space.
Of course, that was a very different era in this country's history, and indeed, the world's history. The United States had a young and dynamic man in the Oval Office who seemed to represent everything that the country saw itself as and aspired to.
Yet, the United States faced challenges. One of them, of course, was the Cold War. And one aspect of the Cold War that actually probably brought out the best on both sides of the Iron Curtain was the space race. It seems to me that the space race, such as it was, came in two different parts. In the early part, the Soviets clearly led the way. On October 4, 1957, the Soviets successfully launched Sputnik I ("Sputnik" is Russian for "traveler"), the first human made satellite into space. In 1959, the Soviet space program scored another victory when they successfully launched Luna 2, which became the first space probe to reach the moon. Then, they won another major aspect of the space race when cosmonaut Yuri A. Gagarin became the first man to go into space, as well as to orbit the Earth, in April of 1961. By this point, not only were the Soviets winning the space race, but they were winning it very decisively.
Many Americans were shocked and even embarrassed that the Soviets had scored so many early successes. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) obviously felt pressure to respond. They launched Explorer I, which was the first American satellite into space. Then, they had the mission that got John Glenn to orbit the Earth on this day in 1962, less than one year after Gagarin and the Soviets had orbited the Earth.
Of course, the major accomplishment, the one that many Americans feel "won" the space race, was when the United States landed men on the moon in July of 1969. That young American president of the early 1960's, John F. Kennedy, had set the goal clearly for the country to aim for the moon and get a man there and back within a decade. This was indeed achieved, and seemed to be one of the last major triumphs for the United States during an era where most people now will acknowledge seemed to mark a decline.
However, I personally view all of these landmarks as huge, historic level achievements not just for individual countries, but for humanity more generally. Those early victories by the Soviets only mark a failure by the United States if one is determined to view it as such. In fact, these were tremendous achievements and triumphs for all of humankind. Frankly, even if we were not able to do so back then, we should now be able to recognize each of these events as almost mindboggling leaps in human technological ingenuity and understanding. Both countries push the other to achieve greater things in the space race, even if the motivation behind these were not always incredibly noble. Indeed, we are likely a better world more generally as a result of them.
To that end, I honor the achievement of sending an American to orbit the Earth on this day 60 years ago, as the country prepared or the ultimate challenge of making good on Kennedy's stated goal of putting a man on the moon and bringing him back safely to Earth within a decade.
Again, perhaps the reasons that drove the two nations to such achievements often tended to be selfish and petty. Indeed, often times they were. However, if it is like a high stakes chess match, only using space as the board, and perhaps differing ideologies as strategies, maybe we would best remember these words by a famous French essayist, which should put into perspective that each of these landmark achievements were a victory for all of humanity, and not for a single country and/or political ideology:
It seems to me safe enough to suggest that the progress in the space race decades ago belongs to all of humanity now, regardless of the individual country that managed to achieve it at the time. All of it marked human progress. And one of those important chapters in progress occurred on this day exactly sixty years ago.
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