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American Sputnik Essay

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In any field, competition is something that is bound to come up. Even in something as varied as math, many famous mathematicians would compete to prove that they are the best. Likewise, the Space Race between the Soviet Union and the United States was not only a competition but a stepping stone in the United States’ development. When the Soviets launched Sputnik on October 4, 1957, it changed many things about the United States of America. The Sputnik launch marked the start of the space age and the US-USSR space race and led to the creation of NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration). With this loss, we realized we needed to work harder on expanding our knowledge and research. We not only wanted revenge but wanted to go farther …show more content…

The president at the time, Dwight D. Eisenhower, in support of this effort, approved a plan to orbit a scientific satellite as part of the International Geophysical Year (IGY) for the period July 1, 1957, to December 31, 1958, a cooperative effort to gather scientific data about the Earth. Although President Dwight Eisenhower had tried to downplay the importance of the Sputnik launch to the American people, he poured additional funds and resources into the space program to catch up. The U.S. Government suffered a severe setback in December of 1957 when its first artificial satellite, named Vanguard, exploded on the launch pad, serving as a very visible reminder of how much the country had yet to accomplish to be able to compete militarily with the Soviets. He believed Space exploration reflected a genuine American desire for free civilian …show more content…

agencies secretly put all effort into the military options these projects would present: photographing enemy territory using reconnaissance aircraft and satellites. The United States spent about $30 billion on the space race from the time the Soviet Union launched its Sputnik satellite in 1957 until the moon landing in 1969. There had been strong resistance to federal aid to education, but as public opinion demanded government action in the wake of Sputnik, the Senate once again moved ahead with its education bill. Just a year after Sputnik, Congress passed the National Defense Education Act (NDEA), a $1-billion spending package to bolster high-quality teaching and learning in science, mathematics, and foreign languages. The National Defense Education Act became one of the most successful legislative initiatives in higher education. It established the legitimacy of federal funding of higher education and made substantial funds available for low-cost student loans, boosting public and private colleges and

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In 1961, John F. Kennedy announced his submission to the “space race”. It was a mission he was determined to win against the Soviet Union, that had been going on since 1957. Although all they did was send a small satellite into space orbiting the earth, it had been a competition against the Russian and American scientist to witness who would perform the next break though in space travel. As a matter of fact, Kennedy announced his plan to Congress on May 2, 1961 that it was time for the nation to take action by being the first to take on a space achievement. As a result, Kennedy established taking the dramatic goal of taking on space travel by announcing his famous speech.

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From a meeting of President Eisenhower’s National Security Council, a conclusion was reached, “…we could not permit ourselves to be panicked by the Soviet Achievement [Sputnik]” (Document 3). The launch of the Sputnik only encouraged Americans to accomplish more scientific breakthroughs—before the Soviets. Before the release of the Sputnik, President Truman had dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Shortly after, the Soviets had detonated their first atomic bomb in the late 1940s. Since the U.S. and the Soviets had both achieved a level of destruction through the atomic bomb they became engaged in an “arms race.”

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NASA was introduced and given purpose by the simple pre-amble stating, “[NASA is] an act for research into the problems of flight within and outside the Earth’s atmosphere, and for other purposes,” (Garber and Launius). Another reason for the creation of NASA was so that the US could contribute to the International Geophysical Year by launching and orbiting a satellite, as approved by President Eisenhower (The Editors of Kennedy Space Center). This satellite that Eisenhower approved was called Project Vanguard and used a simple non-military rocket to get into space (which was a conscious decision considering that the Cold War was raging at this point in time). Though this was a great step for NASA, the hype from this launch didn’t last long simply because the Soviets took the next step, and it was a big one. On October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union launched the first artificial satellite (more technologically advanced) of the

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Dr. James Killian, originally president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was appointed the nation’s first national science advisor, and later convinced Eisenhower to establish a national rocket and space agency, which would be the predecessor of today’s NASA (Kuhn 24). With its establishment on October 1, 1958, the American masses put much attention on NASA; Hillary Clinton, 11 at the time, eagerly wrote to volunteer for astronaut training but was rejected due to her gender. There were quarrels within the US government regarding the development of certain warheads, most notably the ICBM. Even as president, Eisenhower was forced to accelerate missile programs to appease the public as well as politicians who were in a state of panic and frenzy. Amid the process of delivering new policies, politicians took stances and Eisenhower faced much resistance.

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When Neil Armstrong first touched down on the moon in 1969, millions of people watched him take the first step and create history (Villard). Yet even as we’ve moved on from the moon landings and consider them as a pivotal point for mankind, “Forty years after U.S. astronaut Neil Armstrong became the first human to set foot on the moon, many conspiracy theorists still insist the Apollo 11 moon landing was an elaborate hoax”(Than). The idea that our voyage to the moon was deliberately staged seems to resurface year after year. While the conspiracy theorists claim the moon landing was a hoax, creating a fake moon landing would have been more expensive and difficult than actually reaching the moon. The race to the moon began on October 5, 1957, when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik into orbit around the earth: “When the Soviet Union launched the satellite Sputnik, on October 4, 1957, the United States experienced a technological identity crisis”(Olson).

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