Ma's Cow

The Space Race

       In 1992 I watched the spectacular lift off by the Space Shuttle Discovery from its launch pad at Cape Canaveral Florida. Aboard the spacecraft were five astronauts including Canada's second   person into space who is also the first Canadian woman to venture into that vast frontier, Roberta Bondar.

      That the voyage lasted more than a week, and concluded with one of the smoothest touchdowns in the 10-year history of the space shuttle program, is no surprise to anyone. In fact such take-offs and landings have become so commonplace that, barring a catastrophe, none of us really pays much attention to them anymore.

      There was a time when such a spectacular show was completely unheard of. Just 30 years before, in February 1962, the Americans first orbited the Earth after taking off from the same launch pad, as the Shuttle Discovery would later use. The year before, in April 1961, the USSR had launched the first person in history into space and began the Great Space Race, which culminated with the Americans being the first to land on the moon in July of 1969.

      In September of 1962 U.S. President John F. Kennedy said, "The exploration of space will go ahead, whether we join it or not, and it is one of the great adventures of all time and no nation which expects to be the leader of other nations can expect to stay behind in this race for space..."      Mr. Kennedy then went on to tell the American people, and indeed the world, that the United States would land a man on the moon before the end of that decade.

       Such an idea was considered preposterous at the time and most people did not even bother to talk much about it. There were more immediate concerns such as the Cuban Missile Crisis, which was heating up quickly and could lead to an all out nuclear war between the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

       The main reason for this crisis was the USSR's desire to locate nuclear missiles on North American soil, namely the island nation of Cuba, which had just fought a revolution and was using a communist form of government. The Americans told the Soviets not to set up missiles there, but the Russians refused to listen and dispatched ships laden with these missiles to Cuba. The Americans gave them a certain amount of time to turn around or they would retaliate with a   nuclear strike on the Soviet Union.

      Even in the small communities of Belledune and Jacquet River the talk at post offices and general stores consisted mostly about what was happening in Cuba. There was even a practice general black-out country-wide and people were told via radio and television what to do in the event of an actual nuclear attack.

      The churches of all denominations were more filled than usual during this crisis as priests, ministers and rabbis urged their congregations to pray for peace and leadership.

      I remember Mom walking around the house almost continually with a Rosary. She never said anything to us kids, but we knew almost instinctively that something important was happening.

      We heard on the news that people in many of the more populated centers were actually building home air raid and nuclear fall-out shelters.