The Arms and Space Races

The Soviet Union and the United States were constantly in a race. A race to see who could build the better guns that had the best accuracy, the best gun that could kill the most people, do the most damage. They were constantly at battle. A big race was to see who could first blow up an H-Bomb (hydrogen bomb). Hydrogen bombs are more destructive. The hydrogen bomb has the force of 1 million tons of TNT. That's about 67 more times the force of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. At first, the United States was debating on whether or not it was even morale, but they decided to do it. On November 1, 1952, The US won that race. The race to see who could explode the first H-Bomb. But alas, the Soviets caught up in August of 1953 with their own H-bomb exploding.
The first space race was to see who could launch the first artificial satalite. The Soviet Union launched Sputnik into the atmosphere. It traveled around the globe every 96 minutes and traveled around the earth at 18,000 miles per hour. Its success was a triumph for the Soviet Union. We were shocked at first. Our first try to put a satalitte in space was a complete and utter failure. But then on January 31, 1958, we successfully launched our first satalite.