discoverynews:

i wonder what it would take for this to happen again… would China have to launch people to the moon or mars to get American’s excited about space again?

The Psychology of Sputnik

Fifty-five years ago today, the Soviet Union launched history’s first artificial satellite.

Sputnik was an innocuous satellite; Soviet scientists behind the launch were just happy to successfully put the probe into orbit. But in the United States the reaction was different.

The engineering feat very quickly gave way to hysteria and paranoia. President Eisenhower initially downplayed the role of the satellite as a threat to find that he’d grossly underestimated its psychological impact.

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