Location

Obviously, the space race was solely between the two world powers of that time period, the U.S. and Soviet Union. Ironically, these two countries were very contradicting of each other. For both being world powers one would expect many similarities in government and lifestyle. However this was not the case. The U.S. was just coming off of an accomplished victory in WWII and was sitting high and mighty. The democracy government had proven to make this country fair and peaceful. On the other hand, the Soviet Union had also been coming off of a successful WWII and were coasting with power. However, the government did not run things as fair as the U.S. The Soviet Union's Socialist government was very people-controlling and demanding. Although the two are complete opposites, both in government ideals and in location, both countries did what had to be done to become strong world powers. Thus these two have gone down in history as the space revolutionary countries (www.freebase.com).