- published: 16 Oct 2011
- views: 308624
The Space Race was a 20th-century competition between two Cold War rivals, the Soviet Union (USSR) and the United States (US), for supremacy in spaceflight capability. It had its origins in the missile-based nuclear arms race between the two nations that occurred following World War II, enabled by captured German rocket technology and personnel. The technological superiority required for such supremacy was seen as necessary for national security, and symbolic of ideological superiority. The Space Race spawned pioneering efforts to launch artificial satellites, unmanned space probes of the Moon, Venus, and Mars, and human spaceflight in low Earth orbit and to the Moon. The competition began on August 2, 1955, when the Soviet Union responded to the US announcement four days earlier of intent to launch artificial satellites for the International Geophysical Year, by declaring they would also launch a satellite "in the near future". The Soviet Union beat the US to this, with the October 4, 1957 orbiting of Sputnik 1, and later beat the US to the first human in space, Yuri Gagarin, on April 12, 1961. The Space Race peaked with the July 20, 1969 US landing of the first humans on the Moon with Apollo 11. The USSR tried but failed manned lunar missions, and eventually cancelled them and concentrated on Earth orbital space stations. A period of détente followed with the April 1972 agreement on a co-operative Apollo–Soyuz Test Project, resulting in the July 1975 rendezvous in Earth orbit of a US astronaut crew with a Soviet cosmonaut crew.
Well I wonder why it is
that we have rascals rogues and losers
We've got roustabouts rapscallions and a bucket load of boozers
We've got balladeers and blowhards of all sorts
We've got poets priests and pirates
but we have no astronauts
They say there was a space race
if there was I think I missed it
From the earth up to the moon and back,
doesn't that take the biscuit
Well I wouldn't mind a little ride in zero gravity
as long as they could promise I'd be home in time for tea
[chorus]
I've got me two good legs if I wanna take a trip,
I've got no use for a rocket ship
I walk if you don't mind
It's how I always get around
I might be staring at the stars
but I keep both feet on the ground
both feet on the ground
I've got both feet on the ground
There's a great big giant vacuum
up there in the sky
Ah but where's the place to plug it in
I think it's all a lie
I've heard of Halley's Comet
And I'll tell you what I think
It's just a kind of chemical for cleaning out the sink
[chorus]
I've got me two good legs if I wanna take a trip,
I've got no use for a rocket ship
I walk if you don't mind
It's how I always get around
I might be staring at the stars
but I keep both feet on the ground
both feet on the ground
I've got both feet on the ground
We've got no use for Sputnik
We've got sponge to go around
And you'll never see the shuttle land
on the streets of Newlyn Town
Well in the fields of "Vatimbly"
there's not a launching pad in sight
We've got no "Mersa voyageurs"
and we turned out all right
[chorus]
I've got me two good legs if I wanna take a trip,
I've got no use for a rocket ship
I walk if you don't mind
It's how I always get around
I might be staring at the stars
but I keep both feet on the ground
I keep my both feet on the ground