by As a member of Generation Z, I fail to grasp the full graveness of the Cold War, but despite having minimal armed conflict, the Cold War was a dire situation for the entire world that spanned decades. Following the end of World War II in 1945 and the US bombings of Japan, The United States and Soviet Russia were at peaked tensions due to ideological differences, as well as the nuclear capabilities of each country. Throughout the 50’s and 60’s each country developed technology to gain the upper hand in military superiority, including the expansion to space. The space race gave way to satellites, cosmonauts, spacecraft, and other technologies that could potentially give each country the upper hand in warfare. While the Cold War caused billions of people to live in constant fear of global annihilation due to nuclear warfare, the heavy public support of space exploration, as well as advancement in science and technology in both space travel and warfare has shaped the modern weaponry and space programs that are present now. Despite the Cold War officially ending with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the rapid development of science and technology throughout the period has led to the technological advancements we have today, thus showing the effects of the cold war are still present.
With the end of the most gruesome war came years of heightened tensions between countries all over the globe. In August, 1945, the United States dropped the nuclear bombs Little Boy and Fat Man on the cities of Hiroshima. Causing thousands of deaths, an astounding amount of injuries, and completely leveling these cities, the world saw first hand what nuclear weaponry was capable of. One of the world’s superpowers, the USSR, took this act as a show of power by the western world. Due to their communist ideologies, the Soviet Union believed that they could potentially be the next country to be targeted by the US’s devastation. By 1947, the United States and Soviet Union began heavily investing in the development of nuclear weapons and transcontinental ballistic missiles, hoping to create a greater arsenal than the other country. This caused a rampant fear of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) within both countries in the 1950s, fearing that one country launching a nuclear attack would cause the other country to respond with an attack of their own, destroying each other and the countries around them. As the years went on, both the US and USSR took to unknown territories in order to gain the upper hand in the Cold War.
The United States and Soviet Union looked to the final frontier in order to develop new technologies that would aid each country in besting the other. In 1957, the USSR launched the Sputnik 1 satellite into orbit. Fear in America erupted as the Russians now had an orbiting piece of equipment that could potentially be spying on the United States. In response, the American republic rallied around the nation’s space program of its own, NASA, to develop and advance the country’s space technology to that of Russia’s. However, the United States lagged behind the USSR’s developments. In the following years to come, the soviets developed new satellites, put the first live animals into space, and even had the first space walk. Russian Cosmonauts and the entire USSR reveled in their accomplishments, while the US looked on as their rival became stronger. Then, in July of 1969, the Apollo 1 mission successfully landed the first men on the moon, proving that the United States’s space program had excelled past the USSR’s program.
The Cold War officially ended in 1991 after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, causing the USSR’s communist hold on Europe to crumble. Despite conflict ending nearly 30 years ago, the war has shaped many aspects of modern warfare and space exploration that we have today. The nuclear weapons, ballistic missiles, missile defense, satellites, and space exploration all experienced great advancement thanks to the Cold War. NASA’s burst of popularity in the mid to late 20th century caused our general public and government to put an emphasis on space investment and exploration, leading to hundreds of inventions that have use in our daily lives. The advancement of NASA also allowed us to go where man has never gone before, and to potentially bring technology advanced enough to aid wars from the final frontier. The Cold War’s impact on culture, science, and technology cannot be denied, despite the fact that the world almost was surely doomed due to nuclear warfare. Without the looming threat of nuclear warfare from the USSR and the need to develop our military technologies to defend and respond to a nuclear attack, the United States would not have the advancements in space exploration and military weaponry that it has today.