![]() A generation 0f students benefited as educational programs nationwide received this infusion of new federal funding, an investment in education second only to the G.I. Another was the National Defense Education Act of 1958, which appropriated millions for in science and mathematics education at all levels, from the elementary school to postgraduate. ![]() The creation of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration was one. Sputnik signaled a perceived inferiority of American technological know-how, and fear prompted all manner of actions deemed necessary to “catch up” to the Soviet Union in space. After all, if this adversary could launch a satellite over our heads, it could also bring a nuclear weapon down on us. Scientists and engineers congratulated their Soviet counterparts, but political and cultural leaders called attention to the menacing significance of the achievement. In the United States the Space Age dawned with a mixture of excitement and worry. (Click on the photos at left to see sample images from the Smithsonian book, After Sputnik: 50 Years of the Space Age). Belief in that destiny, for all its elusiveness, has motivated tens of thousands of people over the last 50 years to invent the machines and instruments and chart the course for planetary exploration and, perhaps, migration. Finally, it suggested to many that the destiny of humanity rested in the cosmos rather than on Earth. It also established spaceflight as evidence of progress and forward thinking among the nations of the world. It reversed the image of the Soviet Union as a backwater and placed the country on an international footing near to that of the United States. It was a first step beyond this planet, and we have never known a time since when there has not been some human-made object in Earth orbit. Navy admiral characterized it, but it carried on its orbital trajectory a symbolism far beyond its size. Sputnik 1, launched from the Soviet Union’s rocket test site near Tyuratam, Kazakhistan, was a mere 184-pound “hunk of iron almost anybody could launch,” as a U.S. It helped that 1957 was the 40th anniversary of the Russian Revolution.With the launch of a basketball-size satellite on October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union ushered in the “Space Age” and changed the world. The illustrated postcard below celebrated the launch of both Sputnik I and Sputnik II, which on 3 November 1957 carried Soviet space dog into Laika into space. “It was a more tremendous victory for Soviet propaganda to be able to trumpet to the world the Russians were the first to break through the frontiers of space.” Sputnik would indeed go on to feature prominently in posters, stamps, sculptures and monuments to the ideological superiority of the communist system. “Launching of the satellite was a tremendous victory for science,” noted a United Press report breaking news of Sputnik 1 the next day. Physicist Edward Teller, the ‘father of the hydrogen bomb’, described the event as “a greater defeat for our country than Pearl Harbour”. Future US president Lyndon Johnson fumed that the Russians could one day be “dropping bombs on us from space like kids dropping rocks onto cars from freeway overpasses”. American commentators warned of the prospect of enemy attacks raining down from space. While the successful launch and placement of Sputnik 1 into low elliptical orbit was heralded as a scientific triumph, it also excited fears of a dangerous new era in the Cold War stand-off between the Soviet Union and the United States. It entered orbit 295 seconds after lift-off, with the satellite separating about 20 seconds later. The rocket launched at 10:29 pm Moscow time from a secret site now known as the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The second-stage core rocket, carrying a little more than 86 tonnes of fuel, had a burn time of 300 seconds. The boosters, powered by a mix of of liquid oxygen and kerosene, provided the initial lift, burning through about 160 tons of fuel in 120 seconds. The two-stage rocket had a core 28-metre-long fuselage with four strap-on boosters. It did this atop a rocket whose design was derived from the Soviet Union’s development of the world’s first intercontinental ballistic missile – the R-7 ‘Semyorka’. Sputnik’s 1 greatest achievement was actually getting into space. It was highly polished so Sputnik would better reflect sunlight, enabling it to be more easily seen in the sky – particularly when it was over the United States. The aluminium alloy shell was strengthened with magnesium and titanium.
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