A Red Moon over the Mall: The Sputnik Panic and Domestic America

What happened after the fourth of October, 1957, was nothing short of a total crisis of confidence in the American way of life. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics had just initiated the space age by launching the first manmade satellite, named Sputnik or "fellow traveler" and Americans suddenly had to adjust to the notion that Russia was not a backwards nation but a technological equal. The launch of Sputnik and the ensuing panic had vast consequences on American postwar culture. Most histories of the Cold War treat the Sputnik launch as a relatively minor event-surely not as important as the Berlin Air Lift or the Cuban Missile Crisis-and in tracing its effects the focus is often on the very obviousthe heightened international tension of the Cold War, the foreign policy response from President Dwight Eisenhower and his administration, and the resulting nuclear arms buildup. In most people's minds Sputnik is more important for the political and military responses it occasioned than for the actual event itself. Although the launch was of little strategic importance, its full symbolic effect on the Cold War is almost unrivaled, eclipsed only by the moon landing a decade later and, of course, the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. However, along with these official responses, the launch and its symbolism unleashed vast and often unheralded effects on the domestic front due to the society-wide crisis mentality it engendered. It changed the very mind-set with which Americans viewed communism and the Cold War. In more concrete terms, it also allowed for the reorganization and revaluation of the American educational system and established an alliance between government and university research. Perhaps even more importantly, it fractured, or at least exposed the cracks of, the Cold War consensus and perceived complacency of the 1950s. Sputnik not only offered a political opportunity for the Democratic Party but allowed for a serious and critical nationwide discussion of American postwar culture for the first time, publicizing the basic critiques that would gain enormous currency a decade later in the late 1960s. Sputnik was launched as part of the International Geophysical Year, a world-wide program of scientific exchange and experimentation that lasted from July 1, 1957, to December 31, 1958 (Brzezinski 92-93). The IGY offered the perfect way for the Soviet Union to make a bold statement while deflecting criticism that Sputnik was either a propaganda event or a military project. The launch was internationally hailed as a bold scientific achievement, despite the satellite's lack of significant scientific instruments or utility (Sherry 214). In fact, the United States had been planning to launch its own Vanguard satellite as part of the IGY, but Eisenhower had given it low priority despite the administration's previous knowledge of Russia's plans (Killian xvii). As White House Press Secretary James C. Hagerty explained to the press corps a day after the launch, "We never thought of our program as one which was in a race with the Soviets" ("Senators Attack Missile Fund Cut" 1). Part of the reason for the low priority was because the armed forces ironically did not think a satellite had much military potential at the time (Furnas 23). Eisenhower was a little smarter, recognizing the potential to create an orbital replacement for the U-2 spy plane. By separating the IGY project from the military missile programs, he hoped, much like the Russians, to deflect any potential international criticism of a satellite launch. The US satellite project, dubbed Vanguard, was confining to a weakly-funded civilian program with plans to launch in December of 1957 (Divine 1-5). By that time, a Soviet satellite would have already been circling the world, and the United States, for two months. Also, a comparison of the two satellites did not sit well with the American people: Sputnik was a 22-inch sphere weighing 184 pounds, traveling at a speed of 18,000 miles per hour in an orbit 550 miles above the Earth; in contrast Vanguard was the size of a grapefruit: only six-inches and 3. …