What role did the space race play in reducing the nuclear threat during the 1960s?
score:10
The outcome of the Cold War would likely not have been different if the "Space Race" did not occur. To answer your question, the space race played a small role in the outcome of the Cold War.
The result of the Cold War was largely due to the inability of the USSR economy to ever takeoff. The failure of the Five Year Plans, the constant need to try and bridge the "Missile Gap" between the USSR and the US (the US always had the lead), and ultimately the corrupt and inefficient bureaucracy that permeated the USSR.
It seems reasonable to conclude that the goal of using the space race to win the Cold War was not very successful, because there were other more immediate factors hampering the USSR.
Upvote:3
I believe others have greatly underestimated the extent to which the Arms Race, and the Space Race, bankrupted the USSR by forcing it to spend an ever greater proportion of its scarce GDP on military technology.
Then the Afghan War revealed that the emperor had no clothes, while simultaneously Reagan's Star Wars threat pumped up the pressure again. I believe the USSR, underachieving economy and all, could have limped along much longer without that both of these events happened at the same time.
P.S. Don't get me wrong; I have problems with many of Reagan's policies, and I firmly believe that he ventured Star Wars actually believing it might work, and with only a partial notion of it's economic effect on the Soviets. None-the-less, the effect, at least when combined with the Afghan War, was catastrophic. Unrest at home and in the Eastern European colonies became overwhelming, and the Wall tumbled down. In this sense, one must concede that Star Wars was a great success.
Upvote:5
Manned exploration of the Moon has an aspect that is now seldom remembered, but was pretty obvious at the time. Both sides prospected for a permanent Moon presence, soon followed by a populous, self-sufficient Moon colony. Repeating the "New World" scenario.
I don't think such colony would remain non-military (i.e. civilian), but surely expansion into an empty territory is a less destructive (hence more peaceful) goal than destruction of entire life on all its territories (mutual assured destruction). Every penny spent on X means one less penny to spend on Y.
As of now, the Moon race failed to achieve the objective (permanent Moon presence), so there are no practical gains for U.S., or for human race as a whole. These efforts did not paid off... yet. The only things we've earned is some knowledge and some technology that would come handy when we re-attempt space colonization. Well, we can go into how the present use of this bit of technology distributes between "peaceful" and "destructive", but anyway the practical impact is a very small side-effect.
Again, as of now, the effort put into Moon race is nearly useless for our civilization (in practice), but it would be of enormous benefit if we'd finally decide to go and colonize the space.
Upvote:8
Personally I think that's a rather backwards way of looking at things.
One of the main points about the big multistage missiles required to launch things into space is that you need pretty much the same capability to be able to launch things at another country tens of thousands of miles away. So a large part of the space race was always showing the other side that you could destroy them, but doing it in a way that isn't overtly bellicose and can't really be complained about publicly.
This is part of why NASA has been hemoraging support (and funding) ever since the Cold War ended. It just doesn't seem to have a point anymore. Clinton tried in the 90's to redirect NASA's mission to promoting international cooperation and understanding instead, but that's a tougher sell for funding.
However, you can still see this phenomnon today in the little mini space race that China and India appear to be engaged in. Again, its just a proxy for saying "we now have ICBMs that can reach your major cities".
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