Спутник и американская реакция: кризис технологического отставания.

United States reaction to the 1957 launch of the Soviet satellite

The Sputnik crisis was a period of public fear and anxiety in Western nations about the perceived technological gap between the United States and Soviet Union caused by the Soviets' launch of Sputnik 1, the world's first artificial satellite.

In the early 1950s, Lockheed U 2 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 in technology, which was interpreted as a serious threat to US national security, spurring the US to boost federal investment in research and development, education, and national security. The Army's PGM 19 Jupiter from which Juno was derived had been shelved on the orders of Defense Secretary Charles Erwin Wilson amid interservice rivalry with the US Air Force's PGM 17 Thor rocket. 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 (orbit) in the journal Nature 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 launch attempts greatly accentuated the US perception of a threat from the Soviet Union that had persisted since the Cold War had begun after World War II. The same rocket that launched Sputnik could send a nuclear warhead anywhere in the world in a matter of minutes, which would strip the Continental United States 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 five days later and was widely reported in other media.

Five days after the launch of Sputnik 1, the world's first artificial satellite, US President Dwight Eisenhower 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 [proper] perspective". Eisenhower followed this statement by saying that the United States needed to meet these challenges with "resourcefulness and vigor". His ability to project confidence about the situation was limited because his confidence was based on clandestine reconnaissance, 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, 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. The launch spurred a series of US initiatives ranging from defense to education. Increased emphasis was placed on the US Navy's Project Vanguard to launch an American satellite into orbit. There was a renewed interest in the existing Explorer program, 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 (DoD) to develop emerging technologies for the US military. On July 29, 1958, he signed the National Aeronautics and Space Act, 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 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", Eisenhower's successor, John F. Kennedy, promised to deploy 1,000 Minuteman missiles. That was many more ICBMs than the Soviets had at the time. Though Kennedy did not favor a massive US crewed 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, 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." 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. The Sputnik crisis also spurred substantial transformation in the US science policy, which provided much of the basis for modern academic scientific research. 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. By the mid 1960s, NASA was providing almost 10% of the federal funds for academic research. 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 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 strong 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.

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. 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". The crisis contributed to the US–UK Mutual Defence Agreement of 1958.