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Sputnik Crisis New Header The Sputnik Crisis was a period of public fear and anxiety about the perceived technological gap between the United States and Soviet Union caused by the successful launch of Sputnik 1, the world's first artificial satellite.[1] The crisis was a key event in the early Cold War that triggered the creation of NASA and Space Race between the two superpowers. The satellite was launched on October 4th, 1957 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome. The term was coined by former US resident Dwight D. Eisenhower.[citation needed]

Background[edit source | edit]

The United States was the dominant world power in the early 1950s. This was confirmed by the U.S. government's U-2 spy-plane flights over the Soviet Union which provided intelligence that it held the advantage in nuclear arms. However, studies conducted between 1955 and 1961 proported that the Soviet Union was training two to three times as many scientists per year than the United States. The successful launch and orbit of Sputnik 1 suggested that America's challenger had made a substantial leap forward in technology and posed a serious threat to American national security. This, and the subsequent failure of the first two Project_Vanguard launch attempts greatly accentuated the perception in the United States of a threat from the Soviet Union, a perception that had persisted the Cold War began after World_War_II.

The USSR used ICBM (Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile) technology to launch sputnik into space. This essentially gave the Soviets two propoganda victories at once. This proved that the Soviets had rockets capable of sending nuclear weapons from Russia to Europe and even North America. This was the most immediate threat that the launch of Sputnik 1 posed. Not only did the Soviet Union have this ability, the United States did not. America, a land with a history of geographical security, suddenly seemed vulnerable. The same rocket that launched Sputnik could send a Nuclear_warhead anywhere in the world in a matter of minutes, stripping the continental United States of its oceanic defenses. The Soviets had demonstrated this capability on 21 August with a successful 6,000 km test flight of the R-7 booster.{Citation Needed} The event was announced by TASS five days later and was widely reported in the magazine Aviation_Week amongst other media. The source of the fear for the American people was not the satellite itself but more so the rocket that put Sputnik into orbit.

Hours after the launch, the University_of_Illinois_at_Urbana-Champaign Astronomy Department rigged an ad-hoc Interferometer to measure signals from the satellite. Donald_B._Gillies and Jim Snyder programmed the ILLIAC_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 the Ephemeris (orbit) in the journal Nature within a month of the satellite launch helped to dispel some of the fear created by the Sputnik launch by the Soviet Union. It also lent credence to the (likely false) idea that the Sputnik launch was part of an organized effort to dominate space.

The launch spurred the United States to making substantial federal investments in research and development, education, and national security. Less than a year after the Sputnik launch, Congress passed the National_Defense_Education_Act (NDEA). The act 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; however, by 1960 the combined funding grew almost six-fold because of the NDEA.

A contributing factor to the Sputnik Crisis was that the Soviets had not released a photograph of the satellite until 5 days after the launch. Until this point, its appearance remained a mystery to Americans. Another factor was Sputnik's weight. The satellite weighed in at 184 pounds which dwarfed the United States' plans to launch a satellite weighing in at 21.5 pounds. The Soviet's claim was so unbelievable that many American officials doubted its accuracy. US rockets at the time produced 150,000 pounds of thrust and US officials presumed that the Soviet rocket that launched Sputnik into space had to have produced 200,000 pounds of thrust. In fact, the R-7 rocket that launched Sputnik 1 into space produced almost a million pounds of thrust. Some dismissed this accomplishment, such as former United States Rear Admiral Rawson Bennett, chief of naval operations, who stated that Sputnik was a "hunk of iron almost anybody could launch." All these factors contributed to the American people's perception that they were greatly behind the Soviets in the development of space technologies.

Eisenhower's Reaction[edit source | edit]

Five days after the launch of Sputnik 1, the world's first satellite, U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower addressed the people of the United States. After being asked by a reporter about security concerns regarding the Russian satellite, Eisenhower had to show the people that there was nothing to fear. He is quoted as saying "Now, so far as the satellite itself is concerned, that does not raise my apprehensions, not one iota."^[6]

Overall, Eisenhower's response was a calculated one that attempted to undermine the media hysteria that was being generated in the wake of the Sputnik event. Eisenhower made the argument that Sputnik was only a scientific achievement, and not a military threat or change in world power. Eisenhower 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" Eisenhower's military experience taught him that perfecting a weapon as complex as the ICBM would take years, even if it had been successfully tested.

The launch of Sputnik 1 also impacted Eisenhower's ratings in the polls which he eventually recovered from.

Political and Media Reaction[edit source | edit]

Politicians used the event to bolster their ratings in polls. hnu

The media contributed to the public opinion, fear, and panic.

Response[edit source | edit]

The launch spurred a series of initiatives by the United States,^[7] ranging from defense to education. Increased emphasis was placed on the Navy's existing Project Vanguard to launch an American satellite into orbit. The preceding Explorer program that saw the Army launch the first American satellite into orbit on 31 January 1958 also saw a revival.^[8]

By February 1958, the political and defense communities had recognized the need for a high-level Department of Defense (DoD) organization to execute R&D projects and created the Advanced Research Projects Agency. This was later renamed the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency or DARPA. On 29 July 1958, President Eisenhower signed the National Aeronautics and Space Act, the creation of NASA.^[7]

Campaigning in 1960 on closing the "missile gap",^[9] Eisenhower's successor John F. Kennedy decided to deploy 1,000 Minuteman missiles. This was many more ICBMs than the Soviets had at the time.^[10] Though Kennedy did not favor a massive US manned space program while in the US Senate during Eisenhower's term, public reaction to the Soviet's launching the first human into orbit, Yuri Gagarin, on 12 April 1961 led Kennedy to raise the stakes of the Space Race by setting the goal of landing men on the Moon. Eisenhower disagreed with Kennedy's goal, referring to it as a "stunt."^{[citation needed] (CITATION 1).}

Kennedy "privately admitted that the space race was a waste of money, but he knew there were rewards to be reaped from a frightened electorate."

Nikita Khrushchev is quoted as saying "our potential enemies cringe in fright."

Khrushchev admitted, "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."

Gerald Ford, former Republican congressman of Michigan, had stated that "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 each minutes after its launching."

Scientist Joseph Kaplan is quoted as saying "This is really fantastic, and if they can launch that they can launch much heavier ones."

Education programs were initiated to foster a new generation of engineers and support was dramatically increased for scientific research.^[11] Congress increased the National 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.

Americans experienced a "techno-other void" after the Sputnik crisis and continue to express longing for "another Sputnik" to boost education and innovation. During the 1980s, the rise of Japan filled that void temporarily. Following the Sputnik crisis, leaders exploited an "awe doctrine" to organize learning "around a single 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." But American leaders were not able to exploit the image of Japan as effectively despite its representations of super-smart students and a strong economy.^[12]

Elsewhere[edit source | edit]

In Britain the Sputnik crisis was much less visible and reaction to the launch suggested an appreciation of the novelty of the Space Age. It eventually became part of the Cold War narrative when the Soviets launched a dog into space in November 1957.^[13]