To walk among me stars has been a dream of human kind since the beginning of time, wandering among the heavens that inspire legends and fantasies across the ages. Today, that dream has become a reality, a memory of some of the greatest human achievements in history: walking on the moon, sending probes to distant planets and discovering the secrets behind the mysteries of the cosmos. In the middle of the twentieth century, however, humans were at the halfway point between viewing space travel as a dream and as a reality. To them it was a goal rather than a memory, and the two main forces working toward that goal were the world's two superpowers, the Soviet Union and the United States. Both of the great nations, on the advent of incredibly efficient rocket thrusters capable of propelling manmade objects into space, strove to achieve the victory of finding a place among the stars and securing the considerable international prestige associated with that monumental achievement. The Soviet Union gained the initial upper hand in the 'Space Race,' as it is commonly called, sending the first animal into space with. its Sputnik program. Its success and momentum carried it forward, achieving the second remarkable goal of putting a human cosmonaut into orbit around the earth and, more importantly, bringing him safely back to earth. The United States, sensing its losing position in the Space Race, set out to achieve the most ambitious goal yeti, to put a man on the moon. The resources of the entire nation were mobilized to work toward that goal under the orders of President John F. Kennedy, in an attempt to assert itself as a contender in the Space Race despite the Soviet Union's early victories. After several years, all the efforts bore fruit, when Neil Armstrong, an American became the first man to walk on file moon. With the utterance of his famous words, 'That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind,' Armstrong stated what everyone was thinking. The impossible has been achieved, for such a feat was considered impossible a scant hundred years prior. With the space program continuing forward, the future does indeed seem to hold unlimited possibilities for human kind. An international space station is now orbiting the earth and there are even plans for colonizing planets, bringing the dreams and fantasies of yesterday in line with the reality of today. According to the author, the 'Space Race' was______.