Roger Launius
For years the issue of international competition and cooperation in space has dominated much space exploration policy. Indeed, it is impossible to write the history of spaceflight without discussing these themes in detail. The early U.S. space exploration program was dominated by international rivalry and world prestige, and international relations have remained a powerful shaper of the program since. From the time of the creation of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), all of its human spaceflight projects—the Apollo program, the space shuttle, and the space station—have been guided in significant part by foreign relations considerations.
In the 1950s and 1960s the United States and the Soviet Union were locked in the "Moon race," an intensely competitive Cold War struggle in which each sought to outdo the other. No cost seemed too high; no opportunity to best the rival seemed too slight. U.S. astronauts planted the American flag on the surface of the Moon when the great moment came in 1969. The irony of planting that flag, coupled with the statement that "we came in peace for all mankind," was not lost on the leaders of the Soviet Union, who realized that they were not considered a part of "all mankind" in this context.
See also SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY.