The Space Race: the dates worth keeping

The Space Race is one of those stories everyone half-knows. Sputnik, Gagarin, “one small step”, in some order, in some decade. The half-knowing is the problem: history dates evaporate unless something makes you retrieve them.

The skeleton is worth having straight. On 4 October 1957 the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite, and turned a rivalry into a race. On 12 April 1961 Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space, one orbit in 108 minutes. The United States, stung, aimed past orbit entirely: John F. Kennedy promised the Moon within the decade, and on 20 July 1969 Apollo 11 delivered, with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walking on the surface while Michael Collins kept the ride home in orbit.

What makes these facts learnable is that they hang off each other. Gagarin explains Kennedy’s speech; Kennedy’s speech explains the Apollo budget; Apollo explains why the race quietly ended in handshakes aboard Apollo-Soyuz in 1975.

The deck below asks you the cornerstone facts as multiple-choice questions with honestly tempting wrong answers (1957 or 1961?). Play it here, free. To keep the dates past this week, the app brings each one back right before it fades.