How is the temperature of ocean water important to distributing energy as heat
around the global ocean?

The ocean transports warm water and precipitation from the equator toward the poles and cold water from the poles back to the tropic.

The soviet union beat the us to the first successful launch, with the october 4, 1957, orbiting of sputnik 1, and later beat the us to have the first human in earth orbit, yuri gagarin, on april 12, 1961. the "race" peaked with the july 20, 1969, us landing of the first humans on the moon with apollo 11