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The Sputnik Crisis was a period of public fear and anxiety about the perceived technological gap between the United States and Soviet Union caused by the successful launch of ''Sputnik 1'', the world's first artificial satellite.〔 The crisis was a key event in the early Cold War that triggered the creation of NASA and Space Race between the two superpowers. The satellite was launched on October 4, 1957 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome. The term was coined by then US President Dwight D. Eisenhower. ==Background== The successful launch of ''Sputnik 1'' and the subsequent failure of the first two Project Vanguard launch attempts greatly accentuated the perception in the United States of a threat from the Soviet Union, a perception that had persisted since the Cold War began after World War II. The same rocket that launched Sputnik could send a nuclear warhead anywhere in the world in a matter of minutes, stripping the continental United States of its oceanic defenses. The Soviets had demonstrated this capability on 21 August with a successful 6,000 km test flight of the R-7 booster. The event was announced by TASS five days later and was widely reported in the magazine Aviation Week amongst other media. Hours after the launch, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Astronomy Department rigged an ad-hoc interferometer to measure signals from the satellite. Donald B. Gillies and Jim Snyder programmed the ILLIAC I computer to calculate the satellite orbit from this data. The programming and calculation was completed in less than two days. The rapid publication of the ephemeris (orbit) in the journal ''Nature ''within a month of the satellite launch helped to dispel some of the fear created by the Sputnik launch by the Soviet Union. It also lent credence to the (likely false) idea that the Sputnik launch was part of an organized effort to dominate space. Less than a year after the Sputnik launch, Congress passed the National Defense Education Act (NDEA). The act was a four-year program that poured billions of dollars into the US education system. In 1953 the government spent $153 million, and colleges took $10 million of that funding; however, by 1960 the combined funding grew almost six-fold because of the NDEA. After the initial public shock, the Space Race began, leading to the first human launched into space, Project Apollo and the first humans to land on the Moon in 1969. Setting the Stage The United States was the dominant world power in the early 1950s. This was confirmed by the U.S. government's U-2 spy-plane flights over the Soviet Union which provided intelligence that it held the advantage in nuclear arms. However, studies conducted between 1955 and 1961 reported that the Soviet Union was training two to three times as many scientists per year than the United States. The successful launch and orbit of ''Sputnik 1'' suggested that America's challenger had made a substantial leap forward in technology and posed a serious threat to American national security. This spurred the United States to making substantial federal investments in research and development, education, and national security.〔 The USSR used ICBM technology to launch Sputnik into space. This essentially gave the Soviets two propaganda victories at once (sending the satellite into space and proving the distance capabilities of their missiles).〔 This proved that the Soviets had rockets capable of sending nuclear weapons from Russia to Europe and even North America. This was the most immediate threat that the launch of ''Sputnik 1'' posed. Not only did the Soviet Union have this ability, the United States did not. America, a land with a history of geographical security, suddenly seemed vulnerable. Overall, what caused the fear for the American people was not the satellite itself but more so the rocket that put Sputnik into orbit. A contributing factor to the Sputnik Crisis was that the Soviets had not released a photograph of the satellite until 5 days after the launch.〔 Until this point, its appearance remained a mystery to Americans. Another factor was Sputnik's weight. The satellite weighed in at 184 pounds which dwarfed the United States' plans to launch a satellite weighing in at 21.5 pounds.〔 The Soviet's claim was outrageous to many American officials who doubted its accuracy. US rockets at the time produced 150,000 pounds of thrust and US officials presumed that the Soviet rocket that launched Sputnik into space had to have produced 200,000 pounds of thrust. In fact, the R-7 rocket that launched ''Sputnik 1'' into space produced almost a million pounds of thrust.〔 All these factors contributed to the American people's perception that they were greatly behind the Soviets in the development of space technologies. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Sputnik crisis」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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