![Sputnik asm](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/be/Sputnik_asm.jpg)
The Sputnik crisis was a period of public fear and anxiety in
Western nations
The Western world, also known as the West, primarily refers to the various nations and states in the regions of Europe, North America, and Oceania. about the perceived technological gap between the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
and
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...
caused by the Soviets' launch of ''
Sputnik 1
Sputnik 1 (; see § Etymology) was the first artificial Earth satellite. It was launched into an elliptical low Earth orbit by the Soviet Union on 4 October 1957 as part of the Soviet space program. It sent a radio signal back to Earth for t ...
'', the world's first
artificial satellite
A satellite or artificial satellite is an object intentionally placed into orbit in outer space. Except for passive satellites, most satellites have an electricity generation system for equipment on board, such as solar panels or radioisoto ...
.
The crisis was a significant event in the
Cold War
The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...
that triggered the
creation of NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) was created in 1958 from the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), and other related organizations, as the result of the Space Race between the United States and the Soviet Un ...
and the
Space Race
The Space Race was a 20th-century competition between two Cold War rivals, the United States and the Soviet Union, to achieve superior spaceflight capability. It had its origins in the ballistic missile-based nuclear arms race between the tw ...
between the two superpowers. The satellite was launched on October 4, 1957, from the
Baikonur Cosmodrome
The Baikonur Cosmodrome ( kk, Байқоңыр ғарыш айлағы, translit=Baiqoñyr ğaryş ailağy, ; russian: Космодром Байконур, translit=Kosmodrom Baykonur, ) is a spaceport in an area of southern Kazakhstan leased to R ...
. This created a crisis reaction in national newspapers such as ''The New York Times'', which mentioned the satellite in 279 articles between October 6, 1957, and October 31, 1957 (more than 11 articles per day).
Background
In the early 1950s,
Lockheed U-2
The Lockheed U-2, nicknamed "''Dragon Lady''", is an American single-jet engine, high altitude reconnaissance aircraft operated by the United States Air Force (USAF) and previously flown by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). It provides day ...
spy plane flights over the Soviet Union provided intelligence that the US held the advantage in nuclear capability.
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. The launch and orbit of ''Sputnik 1'' suggested that the Soviet Union had made a substantial leap forward in technology, which was interpreted as a serious threat to US national security, which spurred the US to make considerable federal investments in research and development, education, and national security.
The
Juno I
The Juno I was a four-stage American space launch vehicle, used to launch lightweight payloads into low Earth orbit. The launch vehicle was used between January 1958 to December 1959. The launch vehicle was a member of the Redstone launch ve ...
rocket that carried the first US satellite
Explorer 1
Explorer 1 was the first satellite launched by the United States in 1958 and was part of the U.S. participation in the International Geophysical Year (IGY). The mission followed the first two satellites the previous year; the Soviet Union's ...
had been ready to launch in 1956, but the fact was classified and unknown to the public.
The Army's
PGM-19 Jupiter
The PGM-19 Jupiter was the first nuclear armed, medium-range ballistic missile (MRBM) of the United States Air Force (USAF). It was a liquid-propellant rocket using RP-1 fuel and LOX oxidizer, with a single Rocketdyne LR79-NA (model S-3D) r ...
from which Juno was derived had been shelved on the orders of Defense Secretary
Charles Erwin Wilson
Charles Erwin Wilson (July 18, 1890 – September 26, 1961) was an American engineer and businessman who served as United States Secretary of Defense from 1953 to 1957 under President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Known as "Engine Charlie", he was pre ...
amid
interservice rivalry
Interservice rivalry is the rivalry between different branches of a country's armed forces, in other words the competition for limited resources among a nation's land, naval, coastal, air, and space forces. The term also applies to the rivalr ...
with the
US Air Force
The United States Air Force (USAF) is the air service branch of the United States Armed Forces, and is one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Originally created on 1 August 1907, as a part of the United States Army Signal ...
's
PGM-17 Thor
The PGM-17A Thor was the first operational ballistic missile of the United States Air Force (USAF). Named after the Norse god of thunder, it was deployed in the United Kingdom between 1959 and September 1963 as an intermediate-range ballistic ...
.
Launch
The Soviets used
ICBM
An intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) is a ballistic missile with a range greater than , primarily designed for nuclear weapons delivery (delivering one or more thermonuclear warheads). Conventional, chemical, and biological weapons c ...
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.
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 that ''Sputnik 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.
Until then, its appearance remained a mystery to Americans. Another factor was its weight of , compared to US plans to launch a satellite of .
The Soviet claim seemed outrageous to many American officials, who doubted its accuracy. US rockets then produced of
thrust
Thrust is a reaction force described quantitatively by Newton's third law. When a system expels or accelerates mass in one direction, the accelerated mass will cause a force of equal magnitude but opposite direction to be applied to that syst ...
, and US officials presumed that the Soviet rocket that launched Sputnik into space must have produced of thrust. In fact, the R-7 rocket that launched ''Sputnik 1'' into space produced almost of thrust.
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, the
University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign
The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the Universit ...
Astronomy Department rigged an ''ad hoc''
interferometer to measure signals from the satellite.
Donald B. Gillies
Donald Bruce Gillies (October 15, 1928 – July 17, 1975) was a Canadian computer scientist and mathematician who worked in the fields of computer design, game theory, and minicomputer programming environments.
Early life and education ...
and Jim Snyder programmed the
ILLIAC I
The ILLIAC I (Illinois Automatic Computer), a pioneering computer in the ILLIAC series of computers built in 1952 by the University of Illinois, was the first computer built and owned entirely by a United States educational institution.
Compute ...
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
Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physics, physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomenon, phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. ...
'' within a month of the satellite launch helped to dispel some of the fears created by the Sputnik launch.
However, Sputnik was not part of an organized effort to dominate space according to a Soviet space scientist.
The successful launch of ''Sputnik 1'' and then the subsequent failure of the first two
Project Vanguard
Project Vanguard was a program managed by the United States Navy Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), which intended to launch the first artificial satellite into low Earth orbit using a Vanguard rocket. as the launch vehicle from Cape Canaveral ...
launch attempts greatly accentuated the US perception of a threat from the Soviet Union that had persisted since the
Cold War
The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...
had begun after
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
. The same rocket that launched Sputnik could send a
nuclear warhead
A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission (fission bomb) or a combination of fission and fusion reactions ( thermonuclear bomb), producing a nuclear explosion. Both bom ...
anywhere in the world in a matter of minutes, which would strip the
Continental United States
The contiguous United States (officially the conterminous United States) consists of the 48 adjoining U.S. states and the Federal District of the United States of America. The term excludes the only two non-contiguous states, Alaska and Hawaii ...
of its oceanic defenses. The Soviets had demonstrated that capability on 21 August by a test flight of the
R-7 booster. The event was announced by
TASS
The Russian News Agency TASS (russian: Информацио́нное аге́нтство Росси́и ТАСС, translit=Informatsionnoye agentstvo Rossii, or Information agency of Russia), abbreviated TASS (russian: ТАСС, label=none) ...
five days later and was widely reported in other media.
Eisenhower's reaction
Five days after the launch of ''Sputnik 1'', the world's first artificial satellite, US President
Dwight Eisenhower
Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower (born David Dwight Eisenhower; ; October 14, 1890 – March 28, 1969) was an American military officer and statesman who served as the 34th president of the United States from 1953 to 1961. During World War II, ...
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."
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
roperperspective".
In 1958, Eisenhower declared three "stark facts" the United States needed to confront:
* The Soviets had surpassed America and the rest of the free world in scientific and technological advancements in outer space.
* If the Soviets maintained that superiority, they might use it as a means to undermine America's prestige and leadership.
* If the Soviets became the first to achieve significantly superior military capability in outer space and created an imbalance of power, they could pose a direct military threat to the US.
Eisenhower followed this statement by saying that the United States needed to meet these challenges with "resourcefulness and vigor".
The president also noted the importance of education for the Russians in their recent scientific and technological progress, and for America's response to the Russians. 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." His ability to project confidence about the situation was limited because his confidence was based on clandestine reconnaissance,
so he failed to quell the fears that there was a shift in power between the Americans and Soviets.
The launch of ''Sputnik 1'' also impacted Eisenhower's ratings in his polls, but he eventually recovered.
Media and political influences
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
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' wrote that the launch of ''Sputnik 1'' was a major global propaganda and prestige triumph for Russian communism.
Further, Fred Hechinger, a noted American journalist and education editor, reported, “hardly a week passed without several television programs examining education". 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, the notable science fiction writer and scientist
Arthur C. Clarke said that the day that Sputnik orbited around the Earth, the US became a second-rate power.
Politicians used the event to bolster their ratings in polls.
Research and development was used as a propaganda tool, and Congress spent large sums of money on the perceived problem of US technological deficiency.
After the launch of ''Sputnik 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.
Sputnik provoked Congress into taking action on improving the US standing in the fields of science.
Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev (– 11 September 1971) was the First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964 and chairman of the country's Council of Ministers from 1958 to 1964. During his rule, Khrushchev s ...
, 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".
The political analyst
Samuel 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.
Response
United States
The launch spurred a series of US initiatives ranging from defense to education. Increased emphasis was placed on the
US Navy
The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. It is the largest and most powerful navy in the world, with the estimated tonnage of ...
's
Project Vanguard
Project Vanguard was a program managed by the United States Navy Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), which intended to launch the first artificial satellite into low Earth orbit using a Vanguard rocket. as the launch vehicle from Cape Canaveral ...
to launch an American satellite into orbit. There was a renewed interest in the existing
Explorer program
The Explorers program is a NASA exploration program that provides flight opportunities for physics, geophysics, heliophysics, and astrophysics investigations from space. Launched in 1958, Explorer 1 was the first spacecraft of the United Stat ...
, which launched the first American satellite into orbit on January 31, 1958. In February 1958, Eisenhower authorized formation of the Advanced Research Projects Agency, which was later renamed to the
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), within the
Department of Defense Department of Defence or Department of Defense may refer to:
Current departments of defence
* Department of Defence (Australia)
* Department of National Defence (Canada)
* Department of Defence (Ireland)
* Department of National Defense (Philipp ...
(DoD) to develop
emerging technologies for the
US military
The United States Armed Forces are the Military, military forces of the United States. The armed forces consists of six Military branch, service branches: the United States Army, Army, United States Marine Corps, Marine Corps, United States N ...
. On July 29, 1958, he signed the
National Aeronautics and Space Act
The National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958 () is the United States federal statute that created the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The Act, which followed close on the heels of the Soviet Union
The Soviet Union ...
,
the creation of NASA.
Less than a year after the Sputnik launch, Congress passed the
National 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. After the initial public shock, the
Space Race
The Space Race was a 20th-century competition between two Cold War rivals, the United States and the Soviet Union, to achieve superior spaceflight capability. It had its origins in the ballistic missile-based nuclear arms race between the tw ...
began, which led to the
first human launched into space,
Project Apollo, and the
first humans to land on the Moon in 1969.
Campaigning in 1960 on closing the "
missile gap
In the United States, during the Cold War, the missile gap was the perceived superiority of the number and power of the USSR's missiles in comparison with those of the U.S. (a lack of military parity). The gap in the ballistic missile arsenals di ...
", Eisenhower's successor,
John F. Kennedy
John Fitzgerald Kennedy (May 29, 1917 – November 22, 1963), often referred to by his initials JFK and the nickname Jack, was an American politician who served as the 35th president of the United States from 1961 until his assassination ...
, promised to deploy 1,000
Minuteman missile
The LGM-30 Minuteman is an American land-based intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) in service with the Air Force Global Strike Command. , the LGM-30G Minuteman III version is the only land-based ICBM in service in the United States and re ...
s. That was many more
ICBM
An intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) is a ballistic missile with a range greater than , primarily designed for nuclear weapons delivery (delivering one or more thermonuclear warheads). Conventional, chemical, and biological weapons c ...
s than the Soviets had at the time. Though Kennedy did not favor a massive US manned space program when he was in the US Senate during Eisenhower's term, public reaction to the Soviet's launch of the
first human into orbit,
Yuri Gagarin
Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin; Gagarin's first name is sometimes transliterated as ''Yuriy'', ''Youri'', or ''Yury''. (9 March 1934 – 27 March 1968) was a Soviet pilot and cosmonaut who became the first human to journey into outer space. Tr ...
, on April 12, 1961, led Kennedy to raise the stakes of the Space Race by setting the goal of
landing 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."
Eisenhower disagreed with Kennedy's goal and referred to it as a "stunt".
Kennedy had privately acknowledged that the space race was a waste of money, but he knew there were benefits from a frightened electorate.
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 to
land men on the Moon.
American officials had a variety of opinions at the time, some registering alarm and others dismissing the satellite.
Gerald Ford
Gerald Rudolph Ford Jr. ( ; born Leslie Lynch King Jr.; July 14, 1913December 26, 2006) was an American politician who served as the 38th president of the United States from 1974 to 1977. He was the only president never to have been elected ...
, 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".
The Sputnik crisis also spurred substantial transformation in the US science policy, which provided much of the basis for modern academic scientific research.
By the mid-1960s, NASA was providing almost 10% of the federal funds for academic research.
Further expansion was made in the funding and research of space weapons and missile defense in the form of
anti-ballistic missile
An anti-ballistic missile (ABM) is a surface-to-air missile designed to counter ballistic missiles (missile defense). Ballistic missiles are used to deliver nuclear weapon, nuclear, Chemical weapon, chemical, Bioagent, biological, or conventiona ...
proposals.
Education programs were initiated to foster a new generation of
engineer
Engineers, as practitioners of engineering, are professionals who invent, design, analyze, build and test machines, complex systems, structures, gadgets and materials to fulfill functional objectives and requirements while considering the l ...
s and support was dramatically increased for scientific research. Congress increased the
National Science Foundation
The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National I ...
(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 its
5th 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 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". US leaders were not able to exploit the image of Japan as effectively, despite its representations of super-smart students and a strong economy.
United Kingdom
In Britain, the launch of the first Sputnik provoked surprise, combined with elation at experiencing the dawn of the
Space Age
The Space Age is a period encompassing the activities related to the Space Race, space exploration, space technology, and the cultural developments influenced by these events, beginning with the Sputnik_1#Launch_and_mission, launch of Sputnik 1 ...
. It was also a reminder of the
decline in the British Empire's world influence. The crisis soon became part of the broader Cold War narrative.
See also
*
International Geophysical Year
*
New Math
New Mathematics or New Math was a dramatic but temporary change in the way mathematics was taught in American grade schools, and to a lesser extent in European countries and elsewhere, during the 1950s1970s. Curriculum topics and teaching pract ...
*
Timeline of events in the Cold War
References
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External links
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sputnik Crisis
Cold War
Soviet Union–United States relations
Crisis
A crisis ( : crises; : critical) is either any event or period that will (or might) lead to an unstable and dangerous situation affecting an individual, group, or all of society. Crises are negative changes in the human or environmental affair ...
1957 in international relations
1957 in the United States
1957 in the Soviet Union
1957 in spaceflight
Geopolitical rivalry
Technological races
October 1957 events in Europe
Spaceflight histories
October 1957 events in the United States