Question: What event launched the "Space Race"?
About the article "Cold War", section "Sino-Soviet split, space race, ICBMs".

Candidate passages:
The space derby is a racing event for Cub Scouts in the Boy Scouts of America that is similar to the pinewood derby car race.
Cub Scouts (the young-age division of the Boy Scouts of America) race miniature balsa wood rockets that are propelled by a rubber band and propeller. 
Great Urban Race.
Mirroring the television show "The Amazing Race", Joe Reynolds organized and launched Great Urban Race, LLC and hosted the first race on September 15, 2007 in Chicago.
In December 2008, Reynolds brought on four Event Coordinator interns ("Tadpoles") and moved the business from his dining room into an office in Chicago's Lincoln Park neighborhood to help keep up with planning and organizing Great Urban Race. 
The Solar Car Challenge is an annual solar-powered car race for high school students.
The event attracts teams from around the world, but mostly from American high schools.
The race was first held in 1995.
Each event is the end product of a two year education cycle launched by the Winston Solar Car Team.
On odd-numbered years, the race is a road course that starts at the Texas Motor Speedway, Fort Worth, Texas; the end of the course varies from year to year.
On even-numbered years, the race is a track race around the Texas Motor Speedway.
Dell sponsored the event from 2002-2008.
Hunt Oil Company sponsored the 2010 race.  
USA-193, also known as NRO launch 21 (NROL-21 or simply L-21), was an American military spy satellite launched on December 14, 2006.
It was the first launch conducted by the United Launch Alliance.
Owned by the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), the craft's precise function and purpose were classified.
The satellite malfunctioned shortly after deployment, and was intentionally destroyed 14 months later on February 21, 2008, by a modified, SM-3 missile fired from the warship USS "Lake Erie", stationed west of Hawaii.
The event highlighted growing distrust between the U.S. and China, and was viewed by some to be part of a wider "space race" involving the U.S., China, and Russia. 
The question was asked by Senator Clinton Anderson in the early 1960s, what ought to be the objectives of a U.S. space program propaganda: military power, or science?In 1957 when Sputnik was successfully launched by the Soviets, it was a major hit to American pride.
The event undermined the belief that American technological superiority which the defence of the west relied on, was even with the Soviets.
This event showed that the Soviets were ahead of the Americans.
This Soviet achievement put a tremendous amount of pressure on U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower and was looked on by many as his greatest failure.
The Soviet space triumphs continued on and demonstrated that communism was the best way towards modernity.
It made democracy and liberalism less credible.
"The concomitant arrival of Sputnik and the Third World generalized the problem of the American image.
The Soviet challenge and European colonial heritage made it vital for the United States to present and image of progressive anticolonialism.
"On the Soviet side, the success of being first in space was seen as a great victory and expressed much of what was good about Russia and Russian culture.
For the United States to succeed in the space race they needed to get the public enthusiastic about space.
Public enthusiasm and support for the financial cost was key to being able to be successful.
This was at times very hard to do especially after Yuri Gagarin's flight into space in 1961.
This was seen by many as another Sputnik moment or a second Sputnik.
Three years after American successes there was yet again another proof of Soviet technological might.
The American suborbital flight of Alan Sheppard gave the impression of a poor imitation.
Khrushchev stated that Gagarin's flight was the "...greatest triumph of the immortal Lenin's ideas."
The effect of Gagarin's flight should not be underestimated in terms of propaganda.
Egypt's President Nasser stated the "gigantic scientific capabilities of the Soviet people and had no doubt that the launching of man into space will turn upside down not only many scientific views, but also many political and military trends".
There is no evidence to support that any nation became socialist or communist as a result of Soviet advances in space but it did make the regime more respectable and appear less backwards.
American newspapers stated: "a psychological victory of the first magnitude"; "new evidence of Soviet superiority"; "cost the nation heavily in prestige"; "marred the political and psychological image of the country abroad"; "Neutral nations may come to believe the wave of the future is Russian.
"As time went on Gherman Titov's flight into space was seen again as a major accomplishment not only for the Soviet Union as a whole but the Premier himself and was boasted about in Pravda which stated that the Premier, "directs the development of the major technical projects in the country, and determines the basic directions of planned growth in cosmic science and technology.
In his able proposals there is evidence again and again of his great conviction in the triumph of Soviet rocket technology."
Khrushchev felt more and more pressure to put money into missiles and space technology but diverted much of it in an effort for self-serving, political objectives.
Another Soviet first was the flight of Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space.
This was used as a major propaganda theme when she returned in time for the International Congress of Women.
It was a symbol of the Soviet woman.
Tereshkova went on a world tour as proof of the equality of the sexes in the Soviet Union and the "ever-growing superiority of the socialist order of society over capitalism altogether".
When the Soviet Union launched Voskhod 1 which was the first spacecraft to carry 3 people, Pravda's headline read, "Sorry Apollo!
The article continued by saying, "...the so-called system of free enterprise is turning out to be powerless in competition with socialism such a complex and modern area as space research.
""If the newspapers printed a despach that the Soviet Union planned sending the first man to Hell, our federal agencies would appear the next day, crying, "We can't let them beat us to it!"
--- Hyman Rickover, 1959When John F. Kennedy become President of the United States there was a question about how to catch up with the Soviet Union.
Kennedy did not want to "... place safety about the desire to gain some additional prestige".
However, there pressure was there from Congress when Overton Brooks, who was the Chairman of the House Space Committee said, "any step-up in the space program must be designed to accelerate a civilian program of peaceful space exploration and use...
This very important from the standpoint of international relations."
James E. Webb had a meeting with President Kennedy to help convince him the need to spend resources in the area of space.
In this meeting he stated, "...it will be possible through new technology to bring about a whole new areas of international cooperation in meteorology and communications...
The extent to which we are leaders in space science and technology will in large measure determine the extent to which we, as a nation, pioneering on a new frontier, will be in a position to develop the emerging world forces and make it the basis for new concepts and application in education, communications, and transportation, looking towards more viable political, social, and economic systems for nations willing to work with us in the years ahead."
President Kennedy saw the benefits of the space program as both domestic and international.
Kennedy had had a string a failures from Laos to the Congo, the Bay of Pigs Invasion and Gagarin.
Vice President Lyndon Johnson was put in charge of America's objectives in space.
In a report to President Kennedy he stated, "The Soviets led the United States in prestige; the United States had failed to marshal its superior technological resources; the United States should recognize that countries tend to line up with the country they believe to be the leader; if the United States did not act, the Soviet "margin of control" would get beyond our ability to catch up; even in areas where the Soviets led, the United States had to make aggressive efforts; manned exploration of the moon was a great propaganda value but was essential whether or not the United States was first."
Further on in the meeting Johnson stated, "One can predict with confidence that failure to master space means being second best in the crucial arena of our Cold War world.
In the eyes of the world, first in space means first period; second in space is second in everything.
"The space race had triumphs and failures on both sides.
One significant triumph was Apollo 8 in 1968.
1968 was a bad year for America.
The Tet Offensive, Robert Kennedy was shot and killed, Martin Luther King Jr. was shot and killed, there were numerous race riots, and there was a brutal crackdown in Czechoslovakia.
But there was one thing that gave people hope and inspiration.
That was when Apollo 8 circled the moon and read from the first book of the Bible Genesis.
On July 20, 1969 the United States landed on the moon.
Even though this was seen as an American victory in space, the plaque that was left on the base of the lander states that "We came in peace for all mankind".