On October 4, 1957,
the world watched in awe and fear
as the Soviet Union launched Sputnik,
the world's first man-made satellite,
into space.
This little metal ball,
smaller than two feet in diameter,
launched a space race
between the U.S. and U.S.S.R.
that would last for eighteen years
and change the world as we know it.
Sputnik was actually not the first piece
of human technology to enter space.
That superlative goes to the V-2 rocket
used by Germany in missile attacks
against Allied cities
as a last-ditch effort
in the final years of World War II.
It wasn't very effective,
but, at the end of the war,
both the U.S. and U.S.S.R. had captured
the technology
and the scientists that had developed it
and began using them for their own projects.
And by August 1957,
the Soviet's successfully tested
the first inter-continental ballistic missile, the R-7,
the same rocket that would be used
to launch Sputnik two months later.
So, the scary thing about Sputnik
was not the orbiting ball itself,
but the fact that the same technology
could be used to launch a nuclear warhead
at any city.
Not wanting to fall too far behind,
President Eisenhower ordered the Navy
to speed up its own project
and launch a satellite as soon as possible.
So, on December 6, 1957,
excited people across the nation
tuned in to watch the live broadcast
as the Vanguard TV3 satellite took off
and crashed to the ground two seconds later.
The Vanguard failure was a huge embarassment
for the United States.
Newspapers printed headlines like,
"Flopnik" and "Kaputnik".
And a Soviet delegate at the U.N. mockingly suggested
that the U.S. should receive foreign aid
for a developing nation.