50 Years Ago, Launch of a New World

Americans presumed that the space era would begin with the launch of Vanguard, a small U.S. satellite, as part of a global scientific program called the International Geophysical Year. The Soviets announced their own intentions to put up a satellite, but few people gave the claim any credence.

The big event scheduled in the United States for Friday night, Oct. 4, was the premiere of a CBS television series, "Leave It to Beaver."

Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet leader, had taken his son Sergei, then a 22-year-old engineering student, to a meeting of Ukrainian officials in Kiev. It was nearing midnight, Sergei Khrushchev recalled, when an aide summoned his father to the phone. He soon returned, smiling broadly, and announced the launch of Sputnik. But the Ukrainians wanted only to talk about local matters, such as funding for a new electrical station.

Not everyone was surprised that Sputnik Night. Ernst Stuhlinger, a rocket scientist, now 93, had followed von Braun to the United States along with 116 other German scientists. On Sept. 27, 1957, Stuhlinger warned Army Gen. John Medaris, head of the Army Ballistic Missile Agency in Huntsville, Ala., that the Soviets were on the verge of launching a satellite. Medaris told him the Soviets weren't yet capable.

Stuhlinger remembers being in a taxi in Barcelona when the Sputnik bulletin came over the radio. "I told you so," he said to himself.

Sputnik made the popular President Dwight D. Eisenhower suddenly appear out of touch, almost semi-retired. Paul Dickson's "Sputnik: The Shock of the Century" reports that Eisenhower played golf five times during the week of Sputnik's launch.

But Eisenhower had his own geopolitical calculations that the public knew nothing about. He wanted to avoid the militarization of space and insisted that the first American satellite would use a nonmilitary rocket. He knew that the United States would soon have spy satellites for observing the Soviets.

What he didn't anticipate was the public relations disaster that the "Red moon" would become for him. Even the Soviets underplayed the achievement initially. Their 15-paragraph announcement was matter-of-fact, except for the concluding sentence:

"Artificial earth satellites will pave the way for space travel and it seems that the present generation will witness how the freed and conscious labor of the people of the new socialist society turns even the most daring of man's dreams into reality."

In the U.S., Awe and Fear

Sputnik's polished aluminum exterior made it visible from the ground after dusk and before dawn as the satellite reflected the sun's rays. Many Americans lacked any understanding of the Newtonian mechanics of orbiting objects. They wondered why Sputnik didn't fall to the ground.

The political and media riot lasted for months. People suspected that Sputnik was spying on the United States. Was the beep-beep-beep a secret code? Pundits decried the softness of an American society that cared more about the size of automobile tail fins than the long struggle against the communists. Democrats in Congress saw political opportunity, and aerospace corporations envisioned new profits. Lyndon B. Johnson, the Senate majority leader, warned that the Soviets would soon build space platforms and drop bombs on America "like kids dropping rocks onto cars from freeway overpasses." Sen. Mike Mansfield declared, "What is at stake is nothing less than our survival."

A month after Sputnik I came Sputnik II, with a massive payload of more than 1,000 pounds and containing an ill-fated dog named Laika. "Soviets Orbit Second Artificial Moon; Communist Dog in Space," read one headline. A Life magazine column ran under the banner "Arguing the Case for Being Panicky."