prestige

• Many people on both sides saw both the arm and space races as tests of the relative strengths of Capitalism and Communism
• When the USSR launched Sputnik , then the first manned space flight Khrushchev boasted about Soviet superiority
• When the USSR launched Sputnik , then the first manned space flight American believed that they had fallen behind in the arms race and were vulnerable to Soviet attacks
• When the USSR launched Sputnik , then the first manned space flight American believed that their country had lost prestige
• In 1962 , US president Kennedy promised American technology would place a US citizen on the mmoon before 1970 and before a Soviet Communist got there