Summary.
As the Soviets launched Sputnik 1 into space and excelled in their space technologies America feared they would become able to deploy missiles without airplanes or submarines. The fear resulted in -MAD (mutually assured destruction),-MIRVs (Multiple Independently Targeted Re-entry Vehicles), and -Pre-emptive Strike (SAC).
The Space Race and Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles
- The Space Race
- A mid-to-late 20th century competition between the Soviet Union (USSR) and the United States
- For supremacy in space exploration and technologies
- Between 1957 and 1975 rivalry focused on gaining the first space exploration
- Involved efforts to launch artificial satellites
- Began with the Soviet launch of the Sputnik 1
- Concluded with the co-operative Apollo-Soyuz Test Project
- Intercontinental ballistic missiles
- 1991, the United States and the Soviet Union agreed in the START I treaty to reduce their deployed ICBMs
- A number of missiles were pointed in all directions
- The end of the world was perhaps only 30 seconds away
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