Space Age prestige: Sputnik’s sputter as Ike blazed a trail
The past, present, and future have converged. Sixty years ago, on Oct, 4, 1957, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the world’s first artificial satellite. On Wednesday, SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket that may herald the future of spaceflight. Dwight D. Eisenhower, who was president when the space race began, would have had trenchant thoughts on both events.
While it kicked off the space race, Sputnik played a role in another Cold War contest: the prestige race. The Soviet achievement scored a massive propaganda victory and made that country appear the world leader in science and technology. Observers now assumed that Russia’s combination of brains and brawn would propel it to Cold War victory. After Sputnik, one scientist who had worked on the atomic bomb predicted that “by no later than 1975 the United States will be a member of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.”
At his first press conference after the satellite launch, Eisenhower played down Sputnik. When a reporter asked him about national security concerns “with the Russian satellite whirling about the world,” Eisenhower replied that Sputnik “does not raise my apprehensions, not one iota.” Those words rang hollow and made the president seem out of touch.
From secret U-2 flights and other intelligence, Eisenhower knew that Sputnik posed no military threat. Yet from the Cold War’s onset, the arms race was a central competition, with the U.S. and Soviet Union vying for superiority in nuclear weapons and the ability to destroy each other. The space race added a new wrinkle, showcasing a prestige match between the two nations.
During the 1950s, this prestige race accelerated. The Soviet Union ginned up its sports machine, with its athletes collecting more Olympic gold medals and gaining world awe. Nobel Prizes in science mattered more, as they reflected the strength of a country’s educational system and ability to achieve breakthroughs. In this prestige race, Sputnik struck a body blow to America.
But the U.S. rebounded. On Jan. 31, 1958, America launched its first satellite, Explorer, which made far greater contributions to science than Sputnik had, discovering the Van Allen radiation belts that encircle the Earth. In 1958, Eisenhower signed legislation creating the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, which oversaw America’s civilian space program and made it transparent. The contrast between the two space-race competitors was striking. In the Soviet Union, launches took place on a remote desert site, where officials cloaked their activities in secrecy, concealing rocket failures while publicizing successes. In the U.S., launches fired off at Cape Canaveral, and crowds gathered along Florida’s Space Coast to witness vehicles begin their celestial journeys.
Eisenhower liked to point out the difference between the two nations’ approaches to space, and by the time he left office, he had an impressive record of accomplishment: The U.S. had launched 31 satellites, while the Soviet Union had just nine.
But Eisenhower preferred to stress quieter achievements. He fought to bend down the curve of federal spending, railing against budget deficits. Eisenhower was supremely proud of the three balanced budgets during his tenure, which telegraphed the nation’s ability to pay its bills. Any threat to the country’s fiscal health alarmed him. In his farewell address he famously warned of a “military-industrial complex” that demanded more government money and warped the economy.
Eisenhower applied caution to federally funded space projects, advising Americans to avoid getting carried away in a post-Sputnik frenzy, saying he saw no need to “mount our charger and try to ride off in all directions at once,” scattering space efforts across different prestige projects.
Were Eisenhower alive today, he would be pleased at corporate space ventures, which take pressure off federal spending and show the vitality of America’s private enterprise system. He would welcome their launches — like that of the Falcon 9 rocket — and the role they will play in future space exploration.
Above all, Eisenhower felt the best examples of this country’s strengths — the path to winning the world prestige race — were ordinary achievements that Americans take for granted. After leaving office, he urged citizens to measure “some other items in this ‘prestige’ race: our unique industrial accomplishments, our cars for almost everybody instead of just the favored few, our remarkable agricultural productivity, our supermarkets loaded with a profusion of appetizing foods.”
These elements, Eisenhower hoped, would garner the U.S. more world prestige. They reverberate into the 21 st century, six decades after Sputnik, representing the privileges that make this country enviable and unique. In this respect, Eisenhower left an enduring blueprint for national strength — one that still gives guidance today.