America needs A Space Race Ayal Meyers On July 16, 1969, Apollo 11 launched atop a Saturn V rocket with Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins. Four days later, 125 million Americans huddled around grainy television sets in patient anxiety as the module landed on the lunar surface and prepared for deployment. After sixand-a-half hours, as the world watched, Armstrong and Aldrin became the first people to walk on the moon. The historical phenomenon took place more than eight years after Yuri Gagarin and Alan Shepard made independent voyages into space. Gagarin’s successful breach of the thermosphere terrified the United States. The Cold War was underway, and the Soviet Union’s technological achievement suggested the prospect of nuclear advancements. In September 1962, President John F. Kennedy delivered his well-known speech promising American men on the moon by the end of the decade. Historians argue whether the Space Race ended when Aldrin planted the American flag into the dusty lunar regolith in the summer of 1969 or if the 1975 Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, which came to symbolize détente, is the more official conclusion. But, it is an unequivocal truth that the
prodigious competition would leave more of a mark back on planet Earth for years to come. A recent NBC poll found that America’s most significant problems today fall into four categories: the economy, education system, environment/climate change, and national unity. Space exploration could address these issues and deliver the benefits that we saw in the Space Race. Sputnik’s successful launch kicked off the Space Race between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. The competition spurred a new zest for the sciences — particularly engineering — and led to a prolific increase in American investments in education. Inspired to raise a generation of young Americans more knowledgeable and capable than their Soviet counterparts, the U.S. Government established organizations like the National Science Foundation, which was credited with ushering in early education technology like overhead projectors and lab kits into U.S. classrooms. In 1958, President Eisenhower signed the National Defense Education Act, which infused more than $1 billion into education and became the first of a series of bills aimed at obsoleting the American school system of the 1940s. One of the series’s overarching goals was to
reinstate America as the global leader in education. The space-inspired education reforms and academic programs produced stunning results: according to a study done between 1970, five years after Congress passed the Higher Education Act to assist postsecondary education, and 1983, college enrollment rose by 45%. The trend matched a steady and ambitious increase in education funding. Today, according to Pew Research Center, the US is in 38th place out of 71 countries in math scores and 24th place in science. With a waning interest in these fields, America is set to slip in every measure of technological proficiency. National interest in something as fascinating and rewarding as space exploration would be a great solution for this issue. Science and technology are the greatest agents of economic growth the world has ever seen. And while it can be an expensive investment, it is well worth it. In 1966, NASA received nearly 4.5% of the federal budget compared to 0.05% today. Some questioned if that was too much then and asked if returning to the moon today is worth the expense. The answer is yes, unequivocally. Last year, NASA released an agency-wide economic impact report. The report showed that through all NASA activities,
Ayal Meyers
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