Måndag morgon och man vaknar till detta i maillådan!

The Soviet reaction to Kennedy’s ‘To the Moon’ speech is muted, and their leader, Nikita Khrushchev, at first declines to comment.  After all, the Soviets are naturally reluctant to play the Space Race on US terms; the nation, for example, never publicly states a desire to travel to the Moon. The Soviets instead focus on their own priorities – rocket technology and space flight.

In June 1963, Valentina Tereshkova takes off in the Vostok 6 rocket and becomes the first woman in space. Communists regard gender equality as a fundamental part of the liberation of the working class. The Soviets took this seriously, enshrining gender equality in their constitution way back in 1918, at a time when even a woman’s right to vote was seen as a radical idea in most of the Western world. Tereshkova’s solo mission is therefore a symbolic fulfilment of one of the USSR’s core aims – the liberation of women from rigid gender roles.

It is also a great propaganda victory over the Americans. In the 1960s, the US was beset with a series of social problems, especially racial discrimination and gender inequality. Women’s dreams went unrealised, many were condemned to a life of domestic drudgery, and those who did enter the workforce battled a culture of sexism, patronising paternalist attitudes and sexual harassment (though let’s not take the Soviet argument too literally here, as whilst sexism was societally taboo, many Soviet women were still expected to fulfill their traditional role as homemakers as well as working).

Additionally, Mercury 13, a group of privately trained female astronauts who had demonstrated their competence numerous times, were denied entry into NASA’s space programme simply due to their gender. With Tereshkova’s flight, the USSR undercuts the USA’s claim to be a nation that values freedom and self-actualisation, showing the rest of the world that, if you’re a woman and you have big dreams, perhaps it’s better to be a Soviet than an American. 

The Soviets continue their lead in rocket technology and space flight. But then, as autumn approaches, Kennedy does the unimaginable: he extends a hand out to the Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev. He proposes that the US and the USSR work together and establish a joint lunar programme. Americans and Soviets will explore the stars hand in hand, working to achieve the loftiest goal in humanity’s history.

Kennedy’s proposal is made in a climate of relaxing tensions after the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, when the Soviets placed nuclear missiles on nearby Cuba and the world came a hair’s-breadth from annihilation. Diplomacy, not war, averts disaster, and afterwards a partial nuclear test ban treaty is agreed, banning all nuclear tests apart from underground. Additionally, a hotline between the Soviet General Secretary and the American President is established, allowing the leaders of the two superpowers direct communication for the first time.

This is one of history’s great what-ifs. Perhaps this was the first step in the end of the Cold War. Perhaps the bloody and destructive American foreign policy of anticommunism would ramp down, and the Vietnam War would come to an early end. Perhaps, without a seemingly all-powerful enemy, the paranoid and totalitarian Soviet system would open up and allow its citizens the space, freedom and trust to question their leaders.  

We will never know. JFK is assassinated in Dallas, Texas, just a month after the proposal. Lee Harvey-Oswald’s bullet cuts short not just a good man’s life, but also any hope of a collaborative lunar project and a softening of US-Soviet relations. Now, Lyndon B. Johnson, bullish and aggressive, enters the White House. He will pursue a harder line against the USSR, intensify the US’s war against the Vietnamese communists and continue the Space Race as a zero-sum ideological battle.

Redan efter första dagens steg, fick vi vårt första vykort.

JFK’s speech is greeted with great acclaim in the press. It is an inspiring and hopeful message that expresses all the best intentions and goals of space exploration. It’s worth reproducing some of it in full, as it speaks for itself:

“I do say that space can be explored and mastered without feeding the fires of war, without repeating the mistakes that man has made in extending his writ around this globe of ours. There is no strife, no prejudice, no national conflict in outer space as yet. Its hazards are hostile to us all. Its conquest deserves the best of all mankind, and its opportunity for peaceful cooperation may never come again. But why, some say, the Moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask, why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas? We choose to go to the Moon. We choose to go to the Moon… 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; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win, and the others, too”.

Exploration for exploration’s sake, scientific advancement not in the pursuit of power or dominance, but to discover and explore the universe. It is a speech that recognises that unique and noble impulse of humans – to leave comforts, prejudices and preconceptions behind and, in the name of curiosity, explore the unknown. Kennedy, in even stronger terms than Eisenhower in his 1958 speech, establishes a vision for a Space Race that moves further from its military origins.

Of course, not everyone is energised by this rousing paean to science and progress. The American political right dismisses the idea out of hand. Former President Dwight Eisenhower, worried as usual about the nation’s purse strings, calls the idea of spending all these tax dollars on going to the Moon ‘nuts’, and Senator Barry Goldwater, Kennedy’s Republican rival, criticises the prioritisation of a civilian space programme, claiming it would leave the US vulnerable to the still-mounting Soviet military advances.

Yet Kennedy’s speech comes in a time of national (and for the President, likely personal) self-doubt. The Soviets seem to be miles ahead in space-faring technology, having beaten the Americans in almost every endeavour, from satellites to Lunar exploration to space flight. Worse, a year prior, the Bay of Pigs fiasco, when the Soviet-aligned revolutionary government in Cuba repelled a secret US-backed invasion, caused a grave national humiliation. The US at the time needed a reason to believe in itself. Kennedy does this by appealing to the best of American self-conceptions, the nation’s idea of itself as a pioneering people, as innovators and dreamers, boundary-pushers and trailblazers. Americans, as freedom lovers, are not compelled to go to space by a totalitarian government, nor are they forced into the endeavour by the need to compete with a powerful rival – no, they choose to go to the Moon for the sake of their own curiosity, their own humanity.

Då var vi på väg, Gabriel och jag, mot månen.

Det tog bara sexton dagar att slutföra denna utmaning, med Gabriel tätt i hälarna.

Inväntar bara att han också skall gå i mål, sedan startar vi nästa utmaning i ordningen: ”To the Moon”.

That man is named Yuri Gagarin. The son of a garment maker and a dairy farmer in rural Russia, Gagarin proved his mettle and courage even as a young boy. When the Germans invaded his country in WW2, they occupied his house and terrorised his neighbours. After one particularly brutal Nazi officer attempted to murder his brother, Yuri began sabotaging the enemy’s tanks by pouring soil into their batteries. This was an incredibly dangerous endeavour, and Gagarin was risking a fate worse than death if he were caught. Then, when the Germans were finally driven out of his village, he helped the Red Army clear deadly minefields left behind by the fleeing Nazis, potentially saving the lives of hundreds of unaware farmers.

After the war, Gagarin was finally able to pursue his education. He was taught in an ad hoc school by a volunteer teacher. He quickly proved himself a gifted student and was especially fond of maths and science. After graduating from school, he began an apprenticeship at a steel plant near Moscow, completing a university course in the evenings. Then, when studying tractors at a vocational college nearby, he volunteered at a local flying club, where he was eventually recruited to join the air force. Here he proved himself highly capable, and, after expressing interest in the Luna III project, was selected to join the Soviet Space Programme. 

Gagarin’s biography is a great propaganda boon for the Soviet Union. Here is a working-class man who would have, like so many millions of others, toiled away his life, his talents lost in the obscurity of Russia’s vast countryside. To the Soviets, he is typecast as the perfect representation of the ‘new man’, a member of the working class, tough, honourable and brave who, through his intelligence, skill, and, of course, loyalty to the state and the principles of Marxism-Leninism, can achieve goals beyond the wildest dreams of his pre-revolutionary parents. This carefully sculpted icon of Gagarin is broadcast to both the citizens at home, to give them pride in the success of their society, and the working class abroad, who may one day choose to follow in the footsteps of the Soviet Union.

It is April 12th,1961. In the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan SSR, the Vostok 1 rocket prepares for launch. This is the moment that Yuri’s life has been leading up to. At just 27 years old, he is to be, god willing, the first man in space. He pauses for a moment to urinate on the wheel of the bus bringing him to the launch site (starting a tradition among Russian cosmonauts that persists to this day), and then straps himself in. He smiles and speaks the command:

“Poyekhali!”, or “Off we go!”

At 06:07, the ground shakes as the rocket launches. 1,100,000 pounds-force of thrust send Yuri to the heavens at speeds exceeding 17,000 mph (27,400 km/h). After just 10 minutes of flight time, Yuri is in orbit. Like the Roman sun god Helios in his chariot, he traces a blazing comet around our planet for 108 minutes, girdling it once. Whilst in space, he makes a simple and profound transmission back home:

“I see Earth! It is beautiful!”

Then, as Vostok 1 passes over Africa, he begins his descent. A few minutes later, Yuri ejects from his capsule and parachutes down, becoming, as he lands home safe in Russia, the first man to fly to space and come back down again.

Då har man spatserat tillräckligt för att ha kommit 80% av sträckan, med Gabriel tätt i hälarna!

Ett nytt träd planterat!

Efter att ha varit ute på mitt ”Långpass” i min träning inför Midnattsloppet, kom det ett vykort från Space Exploration. Det var ett tufft pass, där jag på något sätt skadade min höft på höger sida. Fick halta hem från Djupadalskolan och kunde knappt stödja på benet!

Just a few months after NASA’s formation, the USA announces Project Mercury, which aims to send a human being into space. In the USA, a new term is coined – astronaut, a traveller of the stars. The project is named after the Roman god Mercury, the god of travellers and messengers.

In the USSR, the Vostok programme begins, aiming for the same goal as the Americans – to put a person into space. Here, another new term is coined – cosmonaut, a traveller of the cosmos.

Korolev leads the design of the state-of-the-art Vostok. It is equipped with all the life support systems necessary to keep someone alive beyond our atmosphere: an ejector seat in case of emergency, a heat shield for re-entry, and a remote control system so that the mission can be guided from ground control. Finally, the theoretical cosmonaut will be equipped with a parachute, so that as they land, they can eject and splash down safely.

In 1960, the Soviets manage to send a dog up into the heavens, and then happily back down just in time for dinner and a long nap, proving that Earth organisms can survive in space. Belka and Strelka spend 24 hours orbiting the Earth and return home with their tails wagging. A year later, when Strelka has a litter of puppies, one of them, named Pushinka (meaning ‘fluffy’ in Russian), is given to President John F. Kennedy as a gift.

Following the pawprints of the first brave canine cosmonauts, the Soviet Union is now mere months away from becoming the first civilisation in world history to breach the barrier of space and ascend beyond our little blue world.

Even so, clamouring among press, people, and politicians, and a pervading sense of national humiliation and paranoia in the country, make it impossible to brush the problem away.

The Americans are immediately jolted out of complacency and into action. In October 1958, responsibility for space exploration and research is taken from the military and given instead to a newly created civilian federal department –  the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, better known as NASA. This is the first step in the slow evolution of the Space Race out of the narrow confines of the Arms Race. NASA, as a civilian institution, claims that its primary aims are scientific research, technological advancement and the exploration of space.

Eisenhower has, to a small extent, demilitarised the Space Race. He now asks the Soviets to compete on new terms. Will they meet the new Space Race? Where the superiority of capitalism or communism is not proven by how powerful one side’s weapons are, but by how capable the system is of mobilising its citizens’ talents and marshalling its resources, of educating scientists and engineers who can push the boundaries of human knowledge, and of capturing the hearts and imaginations of the postcolonial states who are attempting to decide their own political trajectories. 

The Soviets are firm in the belief that a society that has overthrown capitalism and is working towards building communism has advanced socially, culturally, politically and morally beyond any capitalist society. For the ideologues in the CPSU, there is no better way to prove this principle than to push the frontiers of human knowledge and surpass the far richer Capitalist West in technological achievement. By developing technologically, they aim to place themselves ahead of the Americans as the superpower that will trailblaze our planet’s future.

Still, the Cold War persists, and both sides continue to research the military applications of space travel. In 1960, the Soviets begin the Zenit project, which aims to use satellite technology to spy on the Americans. For their part, the USA has surrounded the USSR with military bases, many of them nuclear armed, and continuously sends out its U2 spyplanes, which can fly over 70,000 ft in the air, far above the altitudes that the Soviet radar and jets could reach, over Russia. 

NASA’s creation opens a new chapter in the Space Race. Now there are new stakes, new priorities and new aims. From the bitter and paranoid years of the arms race, a more good-natured competition arises with exploration as the purported aim of the development of space technology.

On 2nd January 1959, Luna I is launched. The aim is for the craft to make contact with the Moon and deposit on its surface two pennants bearing the hammer and sickle, the international symbol of communism. It is equipped with an array of sensors intended to measure the pressure both inside and outside the spacecraft, the radiation of cosmic rays, and the magnetic fields of both the Earth and the Moon.

Luna I launched, reaching speeds of over 25,000 miles per hour. As it nears its target, its guidance system fails, and it passes by, missing the Moon by over 3,725 miles (5,995 km). Still, it is fast and powerful enough to break free of Earth’s orbit, and it flies through open space before being caught by the gravity of the Sun, and pulled into a heliocentric orbit, where it still is today.

The project is, on paper, a failure, but at the same time, a resounding success, becoming the first object from our planet to escape Earth’s gravity. Soviet propagandists immediately get to work. The project is quickly given the nickname ‘Mechta’, meaning ‘dream’ in Russian, and they begin to refer to Luna I as the world’s first ‘Cosmic Ship’. And so, the world sees it, communism has produced the first spaceship, seven years before the USS Enterprise is launched on American television screens.

Eight months later, Luna II is launched with the same aim. This is actually the sixth Soviet probe aimed at making contact with the Moon; the four failed attempts preceding Luna I are kept as a state secret. Sixth time’s a charm, and Luna II successfully reaches the surface of the Moon. 

Then Luna III is launched. This craft is tasked with orbiting the Moon itself and collecting photographs of the dark side of the Moon, the side of the satellite that always faces away from the Earth. The success of this mission means that for the first time, humans see the other side of our Earth’s satellite. The Soviets, on grainy but still detailed black and white film, manage to photograph around 70% of the dark side of the Moon’s surface.

Throughout history, humans have wondered about the Moon. The Sumerians believed it was the god Nanna, father of the Sun. To the ancient Greeks, it was the chariot of the goddess Selene, and its perfect silver light came from the shining pelts of her two snow white horses. And, even as the Soviets brushed our satellite with their fingertips, many people across the world believed that the Moon was the cause of madness, or told stories about its strange ethereal light transforming men into wolves. Now, for the first time in human history, its secrets are almost within reach.

Det går fort med stegen i Space Exploration, och idag kom det ytterligare två vykort, eftersom jag passerat 40% av den totala sträckan.

In 1956, Khrushchev convenes all the most important members of the CPSU and delivers his Secret Speech. In it, he reveals the true extent of Stalin’s crimes: the executions of thousands, the deportation of entire ethnic groups to forced labour camps, the tortures and the forced confessions. He accuses the Stalinists of fostering a cult of personality around their leader, of crimes against humanity, of stifling culture and of betraying the ideals of Marx and Lenin that founded their state. Khrushchev promises destalinisation, the relaxation of censorship and state repression, the release of political prisoners and the return of deported populations. 

The USSR enters a new era, but the rivalries with the USA remain unchanged. The second Red Scare has gripped America, and Senator McCarthy presides over a witchhunt that imprisons and humiliates anyone even suspected of communist sympathies.

In 1953, General Dwight D. Eisenhower becomes president. Eisenhower enters the White House as the colonies of the old Imperial powers of France, Britain, Portugal, and the Netherlands begin to win independence. In these poor and exploited nations, communists and economic nationalists argue that natural resources should be owned by the state and kept out of the hands of foreign corporations. Under the aegis of the Dulles brothers, the CIA grows from a small government department employing just a few hundred people to a huge network of intelligence operatives with a single aim beyond national security: to contain the spread of communism.  Following the Truman Doctrine, the bigwigs in the State Department believe that, if left unchecked, a communist revolution in one nation will, domino-like, spark more and more revolutions across the world.

In the new postcolonial states, if the CIA gets even a whiff of a country turning communist, the Cold War often turns hot. The USA’s doctrine of containment will bring war, coups, atrocities and dictatorships to Indonesia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Guatemala, Cuba, Iran, Nicaragua, and many, many others.

However, the US also wishes to combat communism through soft power, by winning hearts and minds, and so it aims to use its advancements in the Space Race to demonstrate the superiority of capitalism to the postcolonial world and to prevent them from turning to the Soviet Union and left-wing ideals.

Without Stalinist repression, Krushchev needs a new way to keep the people of the Soviet Union onside and to direct their attention away from the great wealth and high standards of living that capitalism is producing in the West. The Soviet state provides healthcare, education, energy, leisure time and basic food free of charge or at heavily subsidised rates, but everyday comforts are practically unheard of. They have few refrigerators, washing machines, or Levi Jeans; food is still rationed and of poor quality, as is housing, and it takes years of waiting to be provided with an apartment or a car. Worse, Krushchev’s Virgin Lands programme, intended to cultivate the vast Central Asian steppe, has ended in ecological, economic and humanitarian disaster, throwing into question the efficacy of a centrally planned command economy. Finally, political repression puts limits on self-expression and free thought. Despite destalinisation, those in the USSR who stray too far from the party line still find themselves in the frozen prisons of Siberia, or in exile abroad.

The Soviet people, and those in the Global South who are deciding the direction of their new nations, need a real reason to believe in communism. The Soviets believe that one can be found in the ability of the USSR to match its much wealthier rival in technological advancement. In addition to its role as a military deterrent to the USA, the Soviet Rocket Programme becomes a way for Soviet citizens to feel proud of their society, to deflect niggling doubts about Soviet-style socialism’s workability and to demonstrate once and for all to the world that Soviet-style communism is the superior system.

Eisenhower has no wish to provoke an all-out war with the Soviet Union, but his foreign policy aims to isolate and threaten it. He instructs the military to focus on the nuclear deterrent, building a huge stockpile of the weapons. Khrushchev, for his part, preaches ‘peaceful co-existence’, whilst at the same time ordering the expansion of the Soviet Missile Programme in the hopes of creating a missile that can strike the heartlands of the United States.

Sergei Korolev has been hard at work. Not only is his project top secret, but so is his name; the identity of the head of the Soviet Space Program will be a mystery until the end of the Cold War. One Winter’s day in the mid-1950s, he invites the high-ups of the Soviet Praesidium to his hidden laboratory to show them something that will change the balance of power. Korolev and his chief rocket engineer, Valentin Glushko, have developed the prototype for the R-7 Semyorka, the world’s first intercontinental ballistic Missile (ICBM), capable of carrying a nuclear-tipped warhead over 7400 miles (12,000 km), putting the continental United States well within range. It is not until 1957 that the prototype is successfully tested, but it’s worth the wait. Now, with the push of a button, the USSR has the power to send a missile to the US in minutes. Additionally, the Soviets can also counter the huge fleet of bombers that the USA possess using missiles, which are far, far cheaper, changing the goalposts in the arms race and mitigating Soviet material disadvantages.

In the sense that both nations now have the means to destroy their rival just as easily as the other, this technological achievement means that the USSR has equal nuclear capabilities with the US. Most important for our story, however, is that the rocket also allows the transportation heavy objects into outer space. Though this feature is intended at first to carry a nuclear warhead, soon, other possibilities arise, opening up the potential for the Soviets to do things only dreamt of in science fiction – sending an artificial satellite into Earth’s orbit, or even, a terrestrial being to the stars. 

Both the United States and the Soviet Union participate, marking the end of over a decade of scientific secrecy between the two nations. Now, to celebrate the IGY, Soviet and American scientists come together to compare and display scientific advances in a variety of fields.

The United States announces Project Vanguard: it will send an artificial satellite to space within three years, joining the lonely Moon as the only other permanent object in Earth’s orbit. Rather predictably, the Soviets make a similar announcement a few weeks later. The race is on.

The US are still unaware of the R-7, which has provided the Soviets with a huge headstart. The Soviets, on the other hand, are unaware of the early U-2 spy planes that the Americans fly over their country, and intelligence starts to come in: the Soviets are training about three times as many rocket scientists per year as the USA. But the American high command is not yet nervous; they have the bulk of the German rocket technology, the expertise of the Operation Paperclip scientists, and far, far more money.

In New Mexico, work begins on Project Vanguard. But progress is slow, and failed launch follows failed launch. Unlike the Soviets, who perform their rocket tests in secrecy, the Americans choose to let journalists and photographers attend launches. But this relative openness backfires as the press begins mocking von Braun and his colleagues’ persistent failures, dubbing them ‘flopniks’ and criticising them for wasting taxpayer dollars.

Then, on October 4th, 1957, the Soviets claim a surprise first victory in the Space Race. Using Korolev’s R-7 ICBM, a gleaming chrome sphere is launched into low orbit. This is Sputnik I (Sputnik meaning ‘satellite’ in Russian). It orbits Earth for three months, sending a radio signal back to a receiver in Moscow and then runs out of battery before plummeting to Earth, burning up in the atmosphere.

Then, another blow to the USA in the race. Just a few months after their launch of Sputnik I, the Soviets send a stray dog picked up from the streets of Moscow into space. Laika, as she was named, became the first being in world history to transcend the terrestrial realm. Poor Laika was never intended to survive her journey as the technology to bring the shuttle back did not exist, but she proved to Soviet scientists that animals could theoretically survive in the zero-gravity, high-radiation environment of space. Suddenly, a new frontier is opened up that seems to stretch the human imagination, perhaps leading it beyond narrow military concerns: Is human space travel possible?  

The result is panic, and the Sputnik Crisis begins in the American Press and politics. Reports come in of the rocket’s power. The satellite the Americans were hoping to launch weighs around 22 pounds (9.8 kg), yet Sputnik I comes in at a hefty 184lb (83 kg). Calculations are made: American rockets at the time were capable of producing about 150,000 pounds-force of thrust, but to launch something as heavy as Sputnik I, engineers would need almost 1,000,000 pounds-force. Even worse, Sputnik’s launch proves the power of the R-7 rocket. There is no denying it anymore: if the Soviets can send a satellite into space, they can send a missile. If they can send a missile into space, then they can send one to the USA.

With the launch of Sputnik, the Soviets win a huge propaganda victory, proving to the whole world that the American homeland is vulnerable to a nuclear strike and showing that the ingenuity, intelligence, and talent produced by their political system are a match for the Americans. Eisenhower attempts to downplay the implications of the launch, but his nation is far further behind than it thought. The USA wakes up to a new reality –  the vast Atlantic and Pacific oceans no longer offer them protection from Soviet weapons.