VI. SPUTNIK AND ITS AFTERMATH, 1957-1965 

 The Impact of Sputnik 



The Soviet Union's successful launching of Sputnik on 4 October 

 1957 drew political attention to the relations between science and 

 government. Occurring during the height of the Cold War, the or- 

 biting of the world's first artificial earth satellite by the Soviets 

 sparked a dramatic reappraisal of U.S. policy on scientific research 

 and science education. People previously uninterested in the Gov- 

 ernment's science policy suddenly discovered its importance to 

 international relations. Even though political and economic compe- 

 tition between the United States and the Soviet Union had been 

 sharp throughout the Cold War, Sputnik served to highlight new 

 challenges in scientific and technological areas. 1 



Sputnik did not, of course, alter the fundamental structure of 

 Federal science support, nor did the event turn Federal policy in a 

 radically different direction. The United States remained commit- 

 ted to its pluralistic, interrelated system of science support. Sput- 

 nik did, however, prompt a reexamination of the health of U.S. sci- 

 ence and engineering. And it probably increased science's populari- 

 ty or, at least, emphasized its importance to national welfare. Al- 

 though Sputnik's overall impact was largely the acceleration of 

 trends already in place, it did help to make it politically easier to 

 appropriate more money for research and development. As a 

 result, the ten years following the launch of Sputnik constituted 

 one of the periods of most rapid growth in the Federal support of 

 science. These years also saw the development of a number of new 

 science advisory mechanisms within the Federal Government. 



The military threat and implications of Sputnik were clear and, 

 in the context of the Cold War, ominous. For the ability of the 

 Soviet Union to build rockets capable of propelling satellites into 

 orbit also meant the ability to deliver hydrogen bombs atop inter- 

 continental ballistic missiles. Even though American scientists and 

 engineers had been aware of the Soviet space research and develop- 

 ment program, they were surprised by the accuracy of a guidance 

 system that could place satellites into a useful orbit. The feasibility 

 of applying such a guidance system to the targeting of nuclear war- 

 heads was not missed by American military planners and scientific 

 advisers. 



Sputnik also did much to generate broad public interest in the 

 Government's policy for civilian science and technology, even 

 among politicians and social commentators who had rarely ad- 

 dressed such issues. Bernard Baruch, for example, wrote in the 



1 Walter A. McDougall's . . . The Heavens and the Earth: A Political History of the Space Age 

 (New York: Basic Books, 1985) provides a detailed account of the impact of Sputnik, as well as of 

 the overall development of the United States space program. 



(41) 



