Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.
To some degree it seems silly how such a simple sound
scared the hell out of Americans during the 1950s. Yet, during the Cold War,
with a lot of nuclear weapons pointed at you on a hair trigger, one can
sympathize.
It’s difficult to say exactly when America’s post
World War II honeymoon ended. Maybe it was when the Soviets first developed the
atomic bomb, or when they were on America’s heels with the development of the
hydrogen bomb. The honeymoon probably did not end with one event or in one
year, but most would agree it was definitely
over by 1957. In September of 1957, the
Little Rock Crisis showed how difficult the struggle for civil rights would be.
The next month would prove just as unnerving when the Soviet Union launched
Sputnik 1, the world’s first artificial satellite, while America was asleep at
the wheel in space development.
How did America lose to the communists in the race for Earth's first satellite? Let’s look at a (very) condensed summary of what led to the Sputnik moment.
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| Sputnik 1 (Photo Credit: NASA) |
In 1952, the International Council of Scientific
Unions established July 1, 1957 to December 31, 1958 as the International
Geophysical Year (IGY) due to high solar activity. By 1954, the council drafted
a resolution encouraging the development of an Earth satellite to be launched
during the IGY. America announced, in mid-1955, that the U.S. would launch the
first satellite in 1957 because of the IGY, but the Soviets would not let their
main geopolitical rival just walk to victory. With the 40th
anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution in 1957, Soviet scientists and
engineers began working on an artificial satellite by early 1956. Their efforts
to create “Object D” quickly fell behind schedule, so Sputnik 1 was developed
in the fear that America would beat the USSR.
However, during this time America was fumbling around.
During the mid-1950s NASA did not exist, therefore space was largely a military
enterprise. The 1955 decision to build an American satellite would become a
competition between the Army, Navy, and Air Force. Whethner von Braun, who later developed the Saturn V, was with the Army at the time developing his Redstone
rocket—and he was very confident that a modified Redstone rocket could launch a
U.S. satellite in a relatively short order. After months of consideration, the
Committee on Special Capabilities, the group that would pick which military
branch would win the opportunity to launch a satellite, chose the Navy’s
Vanguard rocket. It is safe to say that von Braun’s proposal was the most
likely to succeed, but fears that America’s first satellite would be launched by
German engineers shifted the opportunity to the Navy. This decision would haunt
America.
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| Korolev (left) and von Braun (right) Drove the Soviet and American Early Space Efforts (Image Credit: BBC News) |
As the U.S. Navy struggled to get the Vanguard rocket
prepared for flight, the Soviet space scientists were making large strides.
Sergei Korolev, the lead rocket designer for the USSR, had struggled to get his
R-7 rocket flying successfully, but after a successful August 1957 flight of
that rocket, his team was nearly ready to launch a satellite. Korolev’s team
rushed to launch Sputnik, and on October 4, 1957 the world witnessed a
communist victory in space technology.
America fell into a hysteria about Soviet capabilities
shortly after Sputnik 1’s triumph. If the USSR could launch a satellite into
Earth orbit, they could deliver nuclear weapons on American cities within
minutes. Store shelves were raided in fear of a Soviet first strike against the
U.S. Leaders like Lyndon Johnson and John Kennedy quickly pounced on the weak
response by the Eisenhower administration. Many feared the repercussions of
lost American prestige in the world. These fears were inflamed when the USSR
launched Laika, the first dog in space, shortly after Sputnik 1. By December,
the U.S. Navy was finally ready to launch a satellite, but their efforts quickly turned sour as the
Vanguard rocket wobbled and crumbled into a ball of flame with millions of
Americans watching.
The U.S. would finally succeed with Explorer 1
reaching orbit in January 1958—aboard a rocket built by von Braun’s team (Juno I rocket). In fact, von Braun's team could have launched a satellite much earlier, but political roadblocks stopped this from happening.
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| "Kaputnik": America's First Attempt to Launch a Satellite (Photo Credit: National Air and Space Museum) |
So, here we are 60 years after Sputnik. Looking back
now, the success of Sputnik 1 really ignited the Space Race between the USSR
and America. Great accomplishments in space followed this one game changing
event. Would these accomplishments have happened without the Soviets beating
America into space with a satellite or a human being in 1961? The answer:
probably not. Without a Sputnik moment, the moon landing, humanity’s greatest
achievement, may not have occurred or it would have been delayed significantly.
To some degree Sputnik deserves credit for pushing two superpowers to rapidly
develop space technologies that would eventually revolutionize the world. Sixty
years ago, the world heard Sputnik beep from space as two geopolitical rivals
raced for high ground. Today, we can go outside and look up as men and women from
around the world orbit Earth on the International Space Station—a fitting
tribute to the aluminum sphere that started it all.
References:
“Space Race: The Epic Battle Between America and the
Soviet Union for Domination of Space.” By Deborah Cadbury
