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Sputnik's beep-beep-beep sparked global space race
October 4, 1997
Web posted at: 2:07 p.m. EDT (1807 GMT)WASHINGTON (Reuter) -- It changed the world, and all it really did was beep.
Sputnik, the world's first man-made satellite, prompted a global space race when it was launched by the Soviet Union 40 years ago, and ultimately reordered American politics, education and its 1950s mood of invulnerability.
The size of a basketball and the weight of a man, Sputnik emitted a high-pitched beep that could be heard on shortwave radio as the craft orbited Earth, a far cry from the sophisticated satellites now in routine use, and vastly different from the U.S.-Russian venture on Mir.
"We looked like we were the world's leader ... and suddenly, out of the blue, the Soviet Union beats us there."
— -- Roger Launius, NASA chief historian
Sputnik's October 4, 1957, launch was no surprise to U.S. scientists, who had been working with their Soviet counterparts on just such projects, but it shocked the American public.
"We looked like we were the world's leader ... and suddenly, out of the blue, the Soviet Union beats us there," NASA chief historian Roger Launius said about Sputnik's impact on the United States.
Because the launch came at the height of the Cold War between the two countries, and because there were heightened concerns about nuclear weapons, Sputnik's ability to sail over America spawned a very specific fear, Launius said.
"For the first time in U.S. history, the United States was no longer to be protected by its two great oceans," he said. "If the Soviet Union could launch a satellite like this and orbit it overhead, they could also launch a nuclear weapon and bring it down on us."
Congress forms NASA
Sputnik's launch brought a measured response from President Dwight Eisenhower, who congratulated the Soviet Union on its achievement and attempted to allay American anxiety about falling behind. The furor died down within days.
Then, a month later, the Soviets sent a dog into orbit on Sputnik 2.
And a month after that, the United States put its own satellite entry on the launch pad, on national television. At the critical moment, its little top fell off with an embarrassing pop, then the rest of the craft exploded.
This time the furor brought action: Congress drafted laws to form the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the first U.S. agency specifically for space exploration, and provided money for students to study science and technology, to support endeavors like NASA's.
It was also a bone of contention between Eisenhower, a Republican in his second White House term, and Democrats in Congress and elsewhere.
One bit of doggerel by G. Mennen Williams, then Michigan's Democratic governor, captured the mood:
"O little Sputnik flying high, With made-in-Moscow beep, You tell the world it's a Commie sky And Uncle Sam's asleep!"
'Everybody was just really excited'
Eisenhower was succeeded as president by John F. Kennedy, a Democrat who made the space program a highly visible part of his administration.
For many U.S. scientists, Sputnik's ride across the sky was something of a lark.
"My colleagues took radio receivers from the lab and would listen to it when it went over ... everybody was just really excited," said Frank McDonald, who went to work for NASA in 1959. He was a rocket scientist at the University of Iowa when Sputnik went up. "It was an artificial moon up there!"
John Simpson, one of the founders of the International Geophysical Year project that brought U.S. and Soviet physicists together in 1957-58, said he knew the specifics of Sputnik a year before its launch.
"It was not a surprise to me," Simpson said by telephone from the University of Chicago, where he is a professor of physics. At the time, he said, the United States was mired in complacency and interagency squabbling, while the Soviets "knew this would shake up the world."
Copyright 1997 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.
Related story:
- After glory era, cash woes hobble Russian space program - June 27, 1997
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