‘ \ Bennett 1 Grayson Bennett Professor Lynn Raymond University Writing 1103-B02 9 November 2015 Space Race Conversation I decided that the person that I would have the conversation with is was my roommate. As he had already taken AP United States History in high school, he had some background knowledge of the Space Race and the events that surround it. The first question that I asked was if he kme( what the Space Race was. He responded that it was an international race to put a man on thé moon. He continued to say that it was primarily between the United States and the Soviet veo agreed as this was a good overview of what the Space Race was. But I filled in some ests about how John F- Kennedy was of the main contributors to the United States success in “winning” the Space Race. I then asked what he thought was the catalyst or what had caused the Space Race in the first place. He said that he wasn’t really sure what exactly caused the Space Race. To continue the conversation, [told him that the Russian launch of the Sputnik Rocket that put the first manmade object in space was one of the major event that lead to the Space Race. ‘The United States then saw it as a national security issue that Russia was able to launch a satellite to possibly spy on the US while the US did not have a satellite of their own. So there ‘were many factors that lead to the push to develop rockets that have ability to go into space. Over the course of the conversation, the thing that really shocked me was the overall lack of knowledge about the Space Race. Even though he had already taken AP US History in high school, he still didn’t know alll that much about the Space Race. I think this is a common thingBennett 2 among young people. Even I didn’t really know too much about the Space Race before I started to research for this project more than just basic facts. This conversation has helped me solidify the need to make this presentation. I feel like this part of US history is overlooked in history classes when it is one of the most important events in the twentieth century. People are generally uneducated about the details of the Space Race.