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The Sputnik crisis was a turning point of the Cold War
Cold War

The Cold War was the continuing state of conflict, tension and competition that existed between a number of world powers, including the United States, the Soviet Union, People's Republic of China, France, United Kingdom and those countries' respective allies from the mid-1940s to the early 1990s....
 that began on October 4, 1957 when the Soviet Union
Soviet Union

The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a Constitution of the Soviet Union socialist state that existed in Eurasia from 1922 to 1991.The name is a translation of the , romanization of Russian Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik, abbreviated ????, SSSR....
 launched the Sputnik 1
Sputnik 1

Sputnik 1 was the world's first Earth-orbiting artificial satellite. It was launched into a low altitude elliptical orbit by the Soviet Union on October 4, 1957, and was the first in a series of satellites collectively known as the Sputnik program....
 satellite. The United States
United States

The United States of America is a Federal government constitutional republic comprising U.S. state and a federal district. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where its Contiguous United States and Washington, D.C., the Capital districts and territories, lie between the Pacific Ocean and Atlantic Oceans, Borders of the U...
 had believed itself to be the world leader in space
Space

Space is the boundless, three-dimensional extent in which Physical body and events occur and have relative position and direction. Physical space is often conceived in three linear dimensions, although modern physics usually consider it, with time, to be part of the boundless four-dimensional continuum known as spacetime....
 technology and thus the leader in missile development.






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Sputnik Stamp Ussr
The Sputnik crisis was a turning point of the Cold War
Cold War

The Cold War was the continuing state of conflict, tension and competition that existed between a number of world powers, including the United States, the Soviet Union, People's Republic of China, France, United Kingdom and those countries' respective allies from the mid-1940s to the early 1990s....
 that began on October 4, 1957 when the Soviet Union
Soviet Union

The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a Constitution of the Soviet Union socialist state that existed in Eurasia from 1922 to 1991.The name is a translation of the , romanization of Russian Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik, abbreviated ????, SSSR....
 launched the Sputnik 1
Sputnik 1

Sputnik 1 was the world's first Earth-orbiting artificial satellite. It was launched into a low altitude elliptical orbit by the Soviet Union on October 4, 1957, and was the first in a series of satellites collectively known as the Sputnik program....
 satellite. The United States
United States

The United States of America is a Federal government constitutional republic comprising U.S. state and a federal district. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where its Contiguous United States and Washington, D.C., the Capital districts and territories, lie between the Pacific Ocean and Atlantic Oceans, Borders of the U...
 had believed itself to be the world leader in space
Space

Space is the boundless, three-dimensional extent in which Physical body and events occur and have relative position and direction. Physical space is often conceived in three linear dimensions, although modern physics usually consider it, with time, to be part of the boundless four-dimensional continuum known as spacetime....
 technology and thus the leader in missile development. The surprise Sputnik launch and the failure of the first two U.S. launch attempts
Project Vanguard

Project Vanguard was a program managed by the United States Naval Research Laboratory , which intended to launch the first artificial satellite into Earth orbit using a Vanguard rocket as the launch vehicle....
 proved otherwise. The shock of the Sputnik launch was so great throughout America that congresswoman Clare Boothe Luce
Clare Boothe Luce

Clare Boothe Luce was an United States playwright, editor, journalist, ambassador, socialite and one of the first women ever in the United States House of Representatives, representing the state of Connecticut....
 referred to Sputnik's beeps as "an intercontinental outer-space raspberry to a decade of American pretensions that the American way of life was a gilt-edged guarantee of our national superiority". After this initial shock, the Space Race
Space Race

File:Space race1.jpgThe Space Race was a competition of space exploration between the Soviet Union and the United States, which lasted roughly from 1957 to 1975....
 began, leading up to Project Apollo and the moon
Moon

The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite and the List of natural satellites by diameter satellite in the Solar System. The average centre-to-centre distance from the Earth to the Moon is km, about thirty times the diameter of the Earth....
 landings in 1969.

The Sputnik crisis spurred a whole chain of U.S. initiatives, from large to small, many of them initiated by the Department of Defense
United States Department of Defense

The United States Department of Defense is the federal department charged with coordinating and supervising all agencies and functions of the government relating directly to national security and the Military of the United States....
.

  • Within 2 days, calculation of the Sputnik Orbit (joint work by UIUC
    University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

    The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is a public university research university in the state of Illinois, United States. It is the oldest and largest campus in the University of Illinois system....
     Astronomy Dept. and Digital Computer Lab
    Donald B. Gillies

    Donald Bruce Gillies was a Canadian mathematician and computer scientist, known for his work in game theory, computer design, and minicomputer programming environments....
    ).
  • By February 1958, the political and defense communities had recognized the need for a high-level Department of Defense organization to execute R&D projects and created the Advanced Research Projects Agency, which later became the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
    Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency

    The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is an government agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of new technology for use by the military of the United States....
     or DARPA.
  • On July 29, 1958, President Dwight D. Eisenhower
    Dwight D. Eisenhower

    Dwight David ?Ike? Eisenhower was the List of Presidents of the United States President of the United States from 1953 until 1961 and a General of the Army in the United States Army....
     formally brought the U.S. into the Space Race by signing the National Aeronautics and Space Act, creating NASA
    NASA

    The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is an agency of the Federal government of the United States, responsible for the nation's public list of space agencies....
     and later Project Mercury
    Project Mercury

    Project Mercury was the first human spaceflight program of the United States. It ran from 1959 through 1963 with the goal of putting a human in orbit around the Earth....
    .
  • Education programs initiated to foster a new generation of engineer
    Engineer

    An engineer is a person professionally engaged in a field of engineering. Engineers are concerned with developing economical and safe solutions to practical problems, by applying mathematics and scientific knowledge while considering technical constraints....
    s. One of the more remarkable and remembered things that came out of this was the concept of "New Math
    New math

    New Math was a brief, dramatic change in the way mathematics was taught in United States grade schools, and to a lesser extent in European countries, during the 1960s....
    ".
  • Dramatically increased support for scientific research. For 1959, Congress increased the National Science Foundation
    National Science Foundation

    The National Science Foundation is a United States government agency that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering....
     appropriation to $134 million, almost $100 million higher than the year before. By 1968, the NSF budget would stand at nearly $500 million.
  • The Polaris missile
    UGM-27 Polaris

    The Polaris missile was a submarine-launched, two-stage solid-fuel nuclear-armed ballistic missile built during the Cold War by Lockheed Corporation for the United States Navy....
     program.
  • Project management
    Project management

    Project management is the List of academic disciplines of planning, organizing and managing resources to bring about the successful completion of specific project goals and objectives....
     as an area of inquiry and an object of much scrutiny, leading up to the modern concept of project
    Project

    A project in business and science is a collaborative enterprise, frequently involving research or design, that is carefully planned to achieve a particular aim....
     management and standardized project models such as the DoD Program Evaluation and Review Technique
    Program Evaluation and Review Technique

    The 'Program Evaluation and Review Technique', commonly abbreviated 'PERT', is a model for project management designed to analyze and represent the tasks involved in completing a given project....
    , PERT, invented for Polaris.
  • The decision by President John F. Kennedy
    John F. Kennedy

    John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy , often referred to by his initials JFK, was the List of Presidents of the United States President of the United States, serving from 1961 until John F....
    , who campaigned in 1960 on closing the "missile gap
    Missile gap

    The missile gap was the term used in the United States for the perceived disparity between the number and power of the weapons in the U.S.S.R. and United States ballistic missile arsenals during the Cold War....
    ", to deploy 1000 Minuteman missiles, far more ICBMs than the Soviets had at the time.


See also

  • Space Race
    Space Race

    File:Space race1.jpgThe Space Race was a competition of space exploration between the Soviet Union and the United States, which lasted roughly from 1957 to 1975....
  • Sputnik program
    Sputnik program

    The Sputnik program was a series of robotic spacecraft missions launched by the Soviet Union. The first of these, Sputnik 1, launched the first human-made object to orbit the Earth....


External links

  • Roger D. Launius: , nasa.gov