Aiming for the Heavens: Along the Fluid Front of the Cold War

Space, the final frontier, the infinitely expanding universe has marked a persistent area of collective intrigue, curiosity and concern. Today schemes to colonize mars, extract resources from the moon, or wage a capitalistic battle between Tesla and Amazon have or are being attempted, satirized and condemned. Yet, to understand where we are and may go into space, it’s important to understand where a major drive into space occurred, this essay traces a monumental achievement in the open domain of space, the 1969 Moon Landing. The ideological drive that compelled the Moon Landing manifested from the United States Cold War political ideologies that deemed the Soviet Union’s initial achievements in space as a threat to the free world and the leadership of the United States. Marked as the central objective of Kennedy’s New Frontier, the success of Apollo 11, emerged in a world dominated by fear over nuclear annihilation and omnipresent concern’s over the perception of national prestige.