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. 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 4, 1957 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome. The term was coined by then
US President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Background
The successful launch of Sputnik 1 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
since the Cold War began after World War II. 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. The event was announced by
TASS five days later and was widely reported in the magazine Aviation Week
amongst other media. 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 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 idea that the
Sputnik launch was part of an organized effort to dominate space.
Less than a year after the Sputnik launch, Congress passed the National
Defense Education Act. 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. After the initial
public shock, the Space Race began, leading to the first human launched into
space, Project Apollo and the first humans to land on the Moon in 1969.
Setting the Stage 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
reported 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 spurred the United States to making substantial federal
investments in research and development, education, and national security.
The USSR used ICBM technology to launch Sputnik into space. This essentially
gave the Soviets two propaganda 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. Overall, what caused the fear for the American
people was not the satellite itself but more so the rocket that put Sputnik into
orbit. 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 outrageous to
many American officials who 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. 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
Five days after the launch of Sputnik 1, the world's first artificial satellite,
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." 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."
This perspective was gained by Eisenhower through his military
experience that taught him that perfecting a weapon as complex as the
ICBM would take years, even if it had been successfully tested.
In 1958 Eisenhower declared three "stark facts" the United States must confront
in the foreseeable future. First, the USSR had surpassed the United States and
"the rest of the free world" in scientific and technological
advancements in outer space. Second, if the USSR maintains this superiority it
may use it as a means to undermine the United States' prestige and leadership.
Third, if the USSR is the first to achieve significantly superior military
capability in outer space and create an imbalance of power it could pose a
direct military threat to the United States. However, Eisenhower followed
this statement by saying that the United States needs to meet these challenges
with "resourcefulness and vigor." Eisenhower's ability to display
confidence about the situation was limited because it was based on
clandestine reconnaissance. As such, Eisenhower failed to quell the fears
that there was a shift in power between the Americans and Soviets.
The perception of the Soviets as more modern than Americans was perpetuated by
Eisenhower's old fashioned style. The launch of Sputnik 1 also impacted
Eisenhower's ratings in the polls from which he eventually recovered.
Media and Political Influences The media contributed to the public
opinion, fear, and panic by writing sensational pieces on the event. In the
first and second days following the event, New York Times wrote that the
launch of Sputnik 1 was a major global propaganda and prestige triumph for
Russian Communism. It wasn't until after the people of the United States were
exposed to a multitude of news reports did it become a "nation in shock." In
actuality, the media not only reported public concern, it also created the
hysteria. Journalists greatly exaggerated the danger of the Soviet
satellite for their own benefit. On October 9, 1957, notable science
fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke said that the day Sputnik orbited around the
Earth the United States 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 American technological deficiency. After
the launch of Sputnik 1 national security advisers overestimated the
USSR's 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 United States' standing in the fields of science.
The Soviets also had their own hand in the political utilization of the event.
Nikita Khrushchev, leader of the USSR at the time, reflected on the event 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." Political analyst Samuel Lubell
conducted research on the public opinion concerning the satellite following its
launch and found "no evidence at all of any panic or hysteria in the public's
reaction" confirming that it was an elite, not popular, panic.
Response The launch spurred a series of
initiatives by the United States, 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. By February 1958, the political and
defense communities had recognized the need for a high-level Department of
Defense 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.
Campaigning in 1960 on closing the "missile gap", 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. 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. Kennedy claimed that "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, referring 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 shifted US efforts in space to an obsession of taking the lead
from the Soviets, a situation that would not change until the moon landing.
American officials had a variety of opinions at the time, some were alarmed
and some dismissed the satellite. 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." Former United
States 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 United
States' science policy which provided much of the basis for modern academic
science. In the mid-1960s NASA went on to provide 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 proposals. Education programs were initiated to
foster a new generation of engineers and support was dramatically increased for
scientific research. Congress increased the National Science Foundation
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.
= Elsewhere= 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. Sputnik 2, which launched
the Soviet dog Laika into space was seen less as a threat and more so as a
propaganda maneuver. See also
Timeline of events in the Cold War International Geophysical Year
Laika Yuri Gagarin
References Bibliography