How did Americans react to news that the Soviets were the first to put a man in space? They were determined not to lose the space race. Linked the White House with the Kremlin; ease Cold War tensions; communication between the U.S. and the Soviet Union was easier.

The most readily observable difference between the American and Soviet space programs, as measured by numbers of launchings, is that the former put greater efforts into applications of space research to earthbound needs, and the latter put greater efforts into the exploration of the planets.

The Space Race spawned pioneering efforts to launch artificial satellites. NASA, the premiere space research agency, was also built in 1958 during the Space Race to counter the early success in USSR in outer space. The Space Race started with the USSR launching Sputnik 1 in 1957, which created a furor worldwide.

On April 2, 1958, President Eisenhower reacted to the Soviet space lead in launching the first satellite by recommending to the US Congress that a civilian agency be established to direct nonmilitary space activities.

Who Won the Space Race? By landing on the moon, the United States effectively “won” the space race that had begun with Sputnik’s launch in 1957. For their part, the Soviets made four failed attempts to launch a lunar landing craft between 1969 and 1972, including a spectacular launch-pad explosion in July 1969.

When Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon in 1969, America went down in popular history as the winner of the space race. However, the real pioneers of space exploration were the Soviet cosmonauts.

The Americans successfully launched their first satellite four months later called the Explorer I. The Soviets again won the race for putting the first man into space. On April 12, 1961 Yuri Gagarin was the first man to orbit the Earth in the spacecraft Vostok I.

Neil Armstrong

All along, the Soviet moon program had suffered from a third problem—lack of money. Massive investments required to develop new ICBMs and nuclear weapons so that the Soviet military could achieve strategic parity with the United States siphoned funds away from the space program.

The Lost Cosmonauts or Phantom Cosmonauts are subjects of a conspiracy theory alleging that some Soviet cosmonauts went to outer space, but their existence has never been publicly acknowledged by either the Soviet or Russian space authorities.

If we define the ‘space race’ as spaceflight capability, the Soviets won it hands down. But it was the Americans who got to define the space race for posterity when President John F. Kennedy called for putting a man on the moon by the end of the 1960s.

According to Asif Siddiqi and James Harford (see sources), the Soviet Union spent betwen $4.8 billion and $10.1 billion on their manned moon programs. The table below provides a break down of the costs of the by each US space programs. All figures in $ millions.

The first human in space also happened to be Soviet — Yuri Gagarin, who launched on April 12, 1961. The first American, Alan Shepard, launched three weeks later on May 5.

United States Congress

The Obama administration cut NASA’s planetary-sciences budget by 20 percent in 2013, as part of a restructuring plan, contrary to the recommendations of the National Research Council.

The budget specifies funding amounts for programs and projects in human spaceflight, space science, aeronautics, technology development, and education. After the United States won the race to the Moon, space exploration lost political support and NASA’s budget was cut significantly.

Elon Musk’s privately held rocket company SpaceX raised around $1.16 billion via equity funding over the last two months per SEC filings, with the company now reportedly being valued at $74 billion. This compares to a previous valuation of $46 billion based on a $2 billion fundraise last August.

In January 2015, SpaceX raised US$1 billion in funding from Google and Fidelity, in exchange for 8.33% of the company, establishing the company valuation at approximately US$12 billion.

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