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World War II 34th President of the United States
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The Sputnik crisis was a period of public fear and anxiety inWestern nations about the perceived technological gap between theUnited States andSoviet Union caused by the Soviets' launch ofSputnik 1, the world's firstartificial satellite.[1] The crisis was a significant event in theCold War that triggered thecreation of NASA and theSpace Race between the two superpowers. The satellite was launched on October 4, 1957, from theBaikonur Cosmodrome. This created a crisis reaction in national newspapers such asThe New York Times, which mentioned the satellite in 279 articles between October 6, 1957, and October 31, 1957 (more than 11 articles per day).[2]
In the early 1950s,Lockheed U-2spy plane flights over the Soviet Union provided intelligence that the US held the advantage in nuclear capability.[3][4] However, an education gap was identified when studies conducted between 1955 and 1961 reported that the Soviet Union was training two to three times as many scientists per year as the US.[5] The launch and orbit ofSputnik 1 suggested that the Soviet Union had made a substantial leap in technology, which was interpreted as a serious threat to US national security, spurring the US to boost federal investment in research and development, education, and national security. TheJuno I rocket that carried the first US satelliteExplorer 1 was ready to launch in 1956, but that fact was classified and unknown to the public.[6] The Army'sPGM-19 Jupiter from which Juno was derived had been shelved on the orders of Defense SecretaryCharles Erwin Wilson amidinterservice rivalry with theUS Air Force'sPGM-17 Thor rocket.[6]
The Soviets usedICBM technology to launch Sputnik into space, which gave them two propaganda advantages over the US at once: the capability to send the satellite into orbit and proof of the distance capabilities of their missiles.[7] That proved that the Soviets had rockets capable of sending nuclear weapons to Western Europe and even North America. That was the most immediate threat thatSputnik 1 posed. The United States, a land with a history of geographical security from European wars because of its distance, suddenly seemed vulnerable.
A contributing factor to the Sputnik crisis was that the Soviets had not released a photograph of the satellite for five days after the launch.[7] Until then, its appearance remained a mystery to Americans. Another factor was its weight of 184 pounds (83 kg), compared to US plans to launch a satellite of 21.5 pounds (9.8 kg).[7] The Soviet claim seemed outrageous to many American officials, who doubted its accuracy. US rockets then produced 150,000 pounds-force (670,000 N) ofthrust, and US officials presumed that the Soviet rocket that launched Sputnik into space must have produced 200,000 pounds-force (890,000 N) of thrust. In fact, the R-7 rocket that launchedSputnik 1 into space produced almost 1,000,000 pounds-force (4,400,000 N) of thrust.[7] All of those factors contributed to the Americans' perception that they were greatly behind the Soviets in the development of space technologies.
Hours after the launch, theUniversity of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign Astronomy Department rigged anad hocinterferometer to measure signals from the satellite.[1]Donald B. Gillies and Jim Snyder programmed theILLIAC I computer to calculate the satellite orbit from this data. The programming and calculation was completed in less than two days. The rapid publication of theephemeris (orbit) in the journalNature within a month of the satellite launch helped to dispel some of the fears created by the Sputnik launch.[8] However, Sputnik was not part of an organized effort to dominate space according to a Soviet space scientist.[9]
The successful launch ofSputnik 1 and then the subsequent failure of the first twoProject Vanguard launch attempts greatly accentuated the US perception of a threat from the Soviet Union that had persisted since theCold War had begun afterWorld War II. The same rocket that launched Sputnik could send anuclear warhead anywhere in the world in a matter of minutes, which would strip theContinental United States of its oceanic defenses. The Soviets had demonstrated that capability on 21 August by a 6,000-kilometer (3,700-mile) test flight of theR-7 booster. The event was announced byTASS five days later and was widely reported in other media.[10]
Five days after the launch ofSputnik 1, the world's first artificial satellite, US PresidentDwight Eisenhower addressed the American people. After being asked by a reporter on security concerns about the Soviet satellite, Eisenhower said, "Now, so far as the satellite itself is concerned, that does not raise my apprehensions, not one iota."[7]
Eisenhower made the argument that Sputnik was only a scientific achievement and not a military threat or change in world power. He believed that Sputnik's weight "was not commensurate with anything of great military significance, and that was also a factor in putting it in [proper] perspective".[7]
In 1958, Eisenhower declared three "stark facts" the United States needed to confront:
Eisenhower followed this statement by saying that the United States needed to meet these challenges with "resourcefulness and vigor".[11] The president also noted the importance of education for the Russians in their recent scientific and technological progress, and called for America to respond with education reform. He remarked, "we need scientists in the ten years ahead...scrutinize your school's curriculum and standards. Then decide for yourselves whether they meet the stern demands of the era we are entering."[12] His ability to project confidence about the situation was limited because his confidence was based on clandestine reconnaissance,[11] so he failed to quell the fears that there was a shift in power between the Americans and Soviets.[11] The launch ofSputnik 1 also impacted Eisenhower's ratings in his polls, but he eventually recovered.[7]
The media stirred a moral panic by writing sensational pieces on the event. In the first and second days following the event,The New York Times wrote that the launch ofSputnik 1 was a major global propaganda and prestige triumph for Russian communism.[13] Further, Fred Hechinger, a noted American journalist and education editor, reported, "hardly a week passed without several television programs examining education".[14] It was after the people of the United States were exposed to a multitude of news reports that it became a "nation in shock". The media not only reported public concern but also created the hysteria. Journalists greatly exaggerated the danger of the Soviet satellite for their own benefit. On October 9, 1957, science fiction writer and scientistArthur C. Clarke said that the day that Sputnik orbited around the Earth, the US became a second-rate power.[13]
Politicians used the event to bolster their ratings in polls.[7] Research and development was used as a propaganda tool, and Congress spent large sums of money on the perceived problem of US technological deficiency.[15] After the launch ofSputnik 1 national security advisers overestimated the Soviets' current and potential rocket strength, which alarmed portions of Congress and the executive branch. When these estimations were released, Eisenhower was forced into an accelerated missile race to appease those concerned with America's safety.[13] Sputnik provoked Congress into taking action on improving the US standing in the fields of science.
Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet leader, reflected on the event by saying, "It always sounded good to say in public speeches that we could hit a fly at any distance with our missiles. Despite the wide radius of destruction caused by our nuclear warheads, pinpoint accuracy was still necessary – and it was difficult to achieve". At the time, Khrushchev stated that "our potential enemies cringe in fright".[7] The political analystSamuel Lubell conducted research on public opinion about Sputnik and found "no evidence at all of any panic or hysteria in the public's reaction", which confirmed that it was an elite, not a popular, panic.[13]
The week after Sputnik went up, we were digging ourselves out of this avalanche of money that suddenly descended.
— John Jefferies, atHigh Altitude Observatory in 1957[16]
The launch spurred a series of US initiatives[17] ranging from defense to education. Increased emphasis was placed on theUS Navy'sProject Vanguard to launch an American satellite into orbit. There was a renewed interest in the existingExplorer program, which launched the first American satellite into orbit on January 31, 1958.[18] In February 1958, Eisenhower authorized formation of the Advanced Research Projects Agency, which was later renamed to theDefense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), within theDepartment of Defense (DoD) to developemerging technologies for theUS military. On July 29, 1958, he signed theNational Aeronautics and Space Act,the creation of NASA.[17]
Less than a year after the Sputnik launch, Congress passed theNational Defense Education Act (NDEA). It was a four-year program that poured billions of dollars into the US education system. In 1953, the government spent $153 million, and colleges took $10 million of that funding, but by 1960, the combined funding grew almost six-fold because of the NDEA.[19] After the initial public shock, theSpace Race began, which led to thefirst human launched into space,Project Apollo, and thefirst humans to land on the Moon in 1969.[20]
Campaigning in 1960 on closing the "missile gap",[21] Eisenhower's successor,John F. Kennedy, promised to deploy 1,000Minuteman missiles. That was many moreICBMs than the Soviets had at the time.[22] Though Kennedy did not favor a massive US crewed space program when he was in the US Senate during Eisenhower's term, public reaction to the Soviet's launch of thefirst human into orbit,Yuri Gagarin, on April 12, 1961, led Kennedy to raise the stakes of the Space Race by setting the goal oflanding men on the Moon. Kennedy claimed, "If the Soviets control space they can control the earth, as in past centuries the nation that controlled the seas dominated the continents."[15] Eisenhower disagreed with Kennedy's goal and referred to it as a "stunt".[7] Kennedy had privately acknowledged that the space race was a waste of money, but he knew there were benefits from a frightened electorate.[15] The Space Race was less about its intrinsic importance and more about prestige and calming the public.
The Sputnik crisis sparked the American drive to retake the lead in space exploration from the Soviets, and it fueled its drive toland men on the Moon.[11] American officials had a variety of opinions at the time, some registering alarm and others dismissing the satellite.Gerald Ford, a Republican US representative from Michigan, had stated, "We Middle Westerners are sometimes called isolationists. I don't agree with the label; but there can be no isolationists anywhere when a thermonuclear warhead can flash down from space at hypersonic speed to reach any spot on Earth minutes after its launching". Former US Rear Admiral Rawson Bennett, chief of naval operations, stated that Sputnik was a "hunk of iron almost anybody could launch",[7] while former US Army generalJames M. Gavin described it as "the most significant military event of our time".[23]
The Sputnik crisis also spurred substantial transformation in the US science policy, which provided much of the basis for modern academic scientific research.[24] Astronomer John Jefferies, at theHigh Altitude Observatory in 1957, recalled that it had received funding mostly from philanthropists. "The week after Sputnik went up, we were digging ourselves out of this avalanche of money that suddenly descended" from the federal government, he said.[16] By the mid-1960s, NASA was providing almost 10% of the federal funds for academic research.[24]
Further expansion was made in the funding and research of space weapons and missile defense in the form ofanti-ballistic missile proposals.[11] Education programs were initiated to foster a new generation ofengineers and support was dramatically increased for scientific research.[25] Congress increased theNational Science Foundation (NSF) appropriation for 1959 to $134 million, almost $100 million higher than the year before. By 1968, the NSF budget stood at nearly $500 million.
According to Marie Thorsten, Americans experienced a "techno-other void" after the Sputnik crisis and still express longing for "another Sputnik" to boost education and innovation. In the 1980s, the rise of Japan (both its car industry and its5th generation computing project) served to fan the fears of a "technology gap" with Japan. After the Sputnik crisis, leaders exploited an "awe doctrine" to organize learning "around a strong model of educational national security: with math and science serving for supremacy in science and engineering, foreign languages and cultures for potential espionage, and history and humanities for national self-definition".[26] US leaders were not able to exploit the image of Japan as effectively, despite its representations of super-smart students and a strong economy.[26]
In Britain, the launch of the first Sputnik provoked surprise, combined with elation at experiencing the dawn of theSpace Age. It was also a reminder of thedecline in the British Empire's world influence. The crisis soon became part of the broader Cold War narrative.[27] TheDaily Express predicted that "The result will be a new [U.S.] drive to catch up and pass the Russians in the sphere of space exploration. Never doubt for a moment that America will be successful".[28] The crisis contributed to theUS–UK Mutual Defence Agreement of 1958.[29]
Canada’s reaction to Sputnik was primarily cultural and scientific rather than military. The launch sparked widespread media coverage in Québec and across Canada, with newspapers framing it as a turning point in global technological competition. Canadian scientists, such as those atChalk River Nuclear Laboratories, tracked Sputnik’s orbit and expressed admiration for Soviet engineering. This event accelerated Canadian interest in space science and contributed indirectly to Canada’s later development of theAlouette 1 satellite program in the early 1960s, marking Canada as the third nation to enter space.[30]
China viewed Sputnik as a validation of socialist technological superiority and used it as propaganda to strengthen ties with the Soviet Union during the Sino-Soviet alliance. The launch inspired Chinese leaders to accelerate their own missile and satellite programs, which were in their infancy at the time.Mao Zedong emphasized the need for China to “catch up” in science and technology, leading to early planning for what would become the Dong Fang Hong satellite program in the 1960s. Sputnik reinforced China’s commitment to self-reliance in defense and space technology, even as tensions with Moscow later emerged.[31]
The phrase "Sputnik moment" entered the English language to describe similar national situations. The first component is a technoscientific leap by another country. The second component is a national education and research push to catch up on the original leap. Technical or scientific leaps that have been referred to as a Sputnik moment include:
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