Sputnik crisis
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34th President of the United States
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The Sputnik crisis was a period of public fear and anxiety in
Background
In the early 1950s,
Launch
The Soviets used
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) of thrust, 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 launched Sputnik 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, the
The successful launch of Sputnik 1 and then the subsequent failure of the first two
Eisenhower's reaction
Five days after the launch of Sputnik 1, the world's first artificial satellite, US President
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:
- 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.[11]
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 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."[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 of Sputnik 1 also impacted Eisenhower's ratings in his polls, but he eventually recovered.[7]
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 wrote that the launch of Sputnik 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 scientist Arthur 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 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.[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 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.[13]
Response
United States
The week after Sputnik went up, we were digging ourselves out of this avalanche of money that suddenly descended.
— John Jefferies, at High Altitude Observatory in 1957[16]
The launch spurred a series of US initiatives
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.[19] After the initial public shock, the Space Race began, which led to the first human launched into space, Project Apollo, and the first humans to land on the Moon in 1969.[20]
Campaigning in 1960 on closing the "
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.[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 general James 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 the High 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 of anti-ballistic missile proposals.[11] Education programs were initiated to foster a new generation of engineers and support was dramatically increased for scientific research.[25] 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.
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
United Kingdom
In Britain, the launch of the first Sputnik provoked surprise, combined with elation at experiencing the dawn of the Space Age. 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.[27] The Daily 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 the US–UK Mutual Defence Agreement of 1958.[29]
See also
- International Geophysical Year
- New Math
- Timeline of events in the Cold War
References
- ^ a b "Some History of the Department of Astronomy". University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Archived from the original on 4 May 2007.
- ^ "various articles, see link for the search". New York Times. Oct 6–31, 1957.
- ^ S2CID 154455156.
- ISBN 978-0-415-19526-3.
- S2CID 141646561.
- ^ a b Macdougall, Ian (August 15, 2016). "The Leak Prosecution That Lost the Space Race". The Atlantic.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-8014-5150-8.
- S2CID 4273102.
- ^ Isachenkov, Vladimir (1 October 2007). "Secrets of Sputnik Launch Revealed". USA Today. Associated Press. Archived from the original on 13 February 2014. Retrieved 13 February 2014.
- ^ Harford, James (1997). "Korolev's Triple Play: Sputniks 1, 2, and 3, adapted from James J. Harford, Korolev: How One Man Masterminded the Soviet Drive to Beat America to the Moon".
- ^ S2CID 154436145.
- ^ "Dwight Eisenhower - Speech to the Nation on the Future of American Security". www.americanrhetoric.com. Retrieved 2021-11-05.
- ^ S2CID 159948737.
- ^ Herold, J. (1974). SPUTNIK IN AMERICAN EDUCATION: A HISTORY AND REAPPRAISAL. McGill Journal of Education / Revue Des Sciences De l’éducation De McGill, 9(002)
- ^ a b c DeGroot, Gerard (December 2007). "Sputnik 1957". American History.
- ^ a b Jefferies, John (1977-07-29). "John Jefferies" (Oral history). Interviewed by Spencer Weart. American Institute of Physics. Retrieved 2023-01-26.
- ^ a b History Channel (2012a).
- ^ Schefter (1999), pp. 25–26.
- ^ Layman & Tompkins (1994), p. 190.
- ^ DeNooyer (2007).
- ^ Dickson (2003), pp. 5–6, 160–162.
- ^ Dickson (2003), pp. 213–214.
- ASIN B000OKLL8G. Retrieved April 3, 2015 – via Internet Archive.
- ^ a b Geiger, Roger (1997). "What Happened After Sputnik? Shaping University Research in the United States". Minerva: A Review of Science, Learning and Policy.
- ^ Totten, Michael (26 September 2013). "The Effects of the Cold War on us Education". Education Space 360. Archived from the original on 10 November 2013. Retrieved 15 August 2014.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link) - ^ a b Thorsten (2012), p. 74.
- S2CID 142319531.
- ^ "THE NATION: Red Moon Over the U.S." TIME. 1957-10-14. Archived from the original on 2009-05-06. Retrieved 2016-02-24.
- OCLC 464084495.
Bibliography
Books
- Bruccoli, Matthew J.; Bondi, Victor; Baughman, Judith (1994). Layman, Richard; Tompkins, Vincent (eds.). American Decades: 1950–1959. Vol. 6. Detroit: Gale Research. ISBN 0-810-35727-5.
- Burrows, William E. (1999). This New Ocean: The Story of the First Space Age. New York: The Modern Library. ISBN 978-0-375-75485-2.
- Brzezinski, Matthew (2007). Red Moon Rising : Sputnik and the Hidden Rivalries that Ignited the Space Age. New York: Times Books. ISBN 9780805081473.
- Cadbury, Deborah (2006). Space Race: The Epic Battle Between America and The Soviet Union for Dominion of Space. New York: Harper Collins Publishers. ISBN 978-0-06-084553-7.
- ISBN 0-670-81446-6.
- Crompton, Samuel (2007). Sputnik/Explorer 1 : The Race to Conquer Space. New York: Chelsea House. ISBN 9780791093573.
- Dickson, Paul (2003). Sputnik: The Shock of the Century. New York: The Berkley Publishing Group. ISBN 0-425-18843-4.
- Hardesty, Von; Eisman, Gene (2007). Epic Rivalry: The Inside Story of the Soviet and American Space Race. Foreword by Sergei Krushchev. Washington, D.C: National Geographic. ISBN 9781426201196.
- Neufeld, Michael J. (2007). Von Braun: Dreamer of Space, Engineer of War. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 978-0-307-26292-9.
- Ordway III, Frederick I.; Sharpe, Mitchell (2007). The Rocket Team. Burlington, Ontario: Apogee Books. ISBN 978-1-894959-82-7.
- Roman, Peter (1995). Eisenhower and the Missile Gap. Ithaca, N.Y: Cornell University Press. ISBN 0801427975.
- Schefter, James (1999). The Race: The Uncensored Story of How America Beat Russia to the Moon. New York: Doubleday. ISBN 0-385-49253-7.
- ISBN 0-8130-2627-X.
- Spitzmiller, Ted (2006). Astronautics: A Historical Perspective of Mankind's Efforts to Conquer the Cosmos. Vol. Book 1 — Dawn of the Space Age. Burlington, Ontario: Apogee Books. ISBN 978-1-894959-63-6.
- Thorsten, Marie (2012). Superhuman Japan: Knowledge, Nation and Culture in US-Japan Relations. Oxon, UK: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-41426-5.
Other online resources
- DeNooyer, Rushmore (2007-11-06). "Sputnik Declassified". NOVA (Transcript). PBS. Archived from the original on 2012-10-09.
- "July 29: NASA Created". This Day in History. New York: History Channel. 2012. Archived from the original on 2012-10-08.
- "October 4: Sputnik launched". This Day in History. New York: History Channel. 2012. Archived from the original on 2012-10-09.
- Launius, Roger D. (2005). "Sputnik and the Origins of the Space Age". Sputnik and The Dawn of the Space Age. Washington, D.C.: NASA. Archived from the original on 2012-09-17.