Space Race
In 1957, the Soviet Union shocked the world by successfully launching the Sputnik rocket. The U.S. and Soviet Union were engaged in a period of competition and tension, now referred as the Cold War. Prior to Sputnik, the citizens of the United States had assumed the country was technologically superior to the Soviet Union. As a result of Sputnik, the United States poured billions of dollars into its educational and scientific institutions. The space race was on!
President Kennedy was committed to putting a man on the moon before the Russians did.