First and foremost, what Eisenhower wanted to know was if the planned lower orbit of Vanguard would negatively impact US prestige. This lower orbit would mean that Vanguard would deorbit more quickly than Sputnik, potentially prompting another blow to the image of American technological capability. Quarles once again stressed the sophisticated scientific nature of the American satellite, explaining that there was more to be learned from Vanguard than Sputnik. Later, Vice President Richard Nixon reemphasized the political payoffs of a scientific satellite. Sharing data gathered by Vanguard would be of “great propaganda advantage for the United States,” he observed. NSF Director Alan Waterman affirmed Nixon’s and Quarles’s points: the combination of a sophisticated scientific instrumentation package and the open approach to its space program put the United States in a more competitive position in terms of prestige.
Near the end of the NSC meeting, USIA Director Arthur Larson expressed concern over the effects of Sputnik on foreign public opinion. Although Sputnik should not have caused a shock, he said, the cumulative impact of the Soviet accomplishment could be detrimental to the international standing of the United States. Before taking the helm of the USIA, Larson had been Eisenhower’s trusted speechwriter, known as the “chief theoretician of moderate Republicanism.” Earlier that year, a Washington Post journalist portrayed him as “a youngish fellow, who manages to retain an oddly hopeful look.”34 Sitting at the table with other national security experts, he likely appeared less hopeful.
“If we lose repeatedly to the Russians as we have lost with the earth satellite,” he cautioned, “the accumulated damage would be tremendous.” The United States should set its sights on an impressive feat—perhaps orbiting a man in space or sending a crew to the moon—to secure American prestige, he continued. NAS President Detlev Bronk responded that the United States should focus on other types of scientific breakthroughs and not simply follow the Soviet lead. But he could not deny that space exploration held unique appeal.35
More challenges would come in the coming months for Eisenhower. Between October 4 and the following February, countless meetings, speeches, reports, hearings, and editorials not just about Sputnik but also the role of science within American society captured national and international attention. Although dismayed and nonplussed by the public response to Sputnik, Eisenhower relented. By the end of October, he supported raising the federal budget for defense in 1958 and 1959. As sure as he was of US military superiority, Eisenhower viewed the importance of “convincing the world—presently scared by Russia—that the United States is doing what it should,” that the process was worth the high cost. This was not a matter of hardware; it was a matter of signaling that he was taking action.36
On the same day that Eisenhower met with the NSC in Washington, Khrushchev discussed Sputnik at a Presidium meeting in Moscow. Almost in synchronization, the two world leaders were briefed on the launch and the global response. Described as “unusually animated,” Khrushchev insisted that Korolev’s team build a “space gift” to mark the fortieth anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution, the second phase of the 1917 Russian Revolution in which the Bolshevik Party seized power, led by Vladimir Lenin. Khrushchev well knew that the Soviet Union could not achieve ICBM parity with the US. Instead, it would surpass America in symbolic victories, the new currency of cold war competition.37 The time line for the next satellite would be quick. The anniversary was less than a month away, in early November.38
Korolev upped the stakes. He accepted Khrushchev’s challenge and suggested that they fly a dog on the next mission. Even under the strain, “it was… the happiest month of his [Korolev’s] life,” recalled cosmonaut Georgy Grechko, who worked in Korolev’s design bureau at the time. “He told his staff, and his workers, that there would be no special drawings, no quality check, everyone would have to be guided by his own conscience.”39
A few days after the NSC and Presidium meetings, the USIA’s Office of Research and Intelligence submitted a confidential report on world opinion of the Soviet satellite. The results were worrisome to US officials.40 During its first few years in operation the USIA had focused primarily on information dissemination. But in 1955, as part of a larger reevaluation of basic national security policy, the NSC pushed for extending the scope of the USIA’s mission to include a more robust polling and impact-assessment program to support changing national security interests.41 These opinion polls relied on an elaborate system designed to conceal that the US government was behind each study. The USIA contracted local pollsters around the world, who in turn hired local interviewers.42 According to the most recent poll at the time, international public opinion viewed the Soviet Union as technologically superior to the United States, and the small satellite raised the nation’s overall prestige. Western Europeans believed that the balance of military power had shifted from the US to the USSR, and they found Soviet propaganda more credible. The “World Opinion and the Soviet Satellite” report warned that the overall impact of Sputnik would be strongest among the “backward, ignorant and apolitical” populations of the developing world. Newly independent nations might be convinced of the validity of the Soviet system because of their thirst for rapid technological and economic advancement. Passing over almost every nation in the world, it was “likely to give a peculiar impact among those least able to understand it,” generating “myth, legend and enduring superstition of a kind peculiarly difficult to eradicate or modify, which the USSR can exploit,” the report warned. And it appeared the Soviet Union was mounting a psychological warfare campaign for marketing the supposed military implications of the satellite.43
The authors of the report blamed the United States for intensifying the impact of Sputnik on foreign public opinion. Not only did US officials heavily promote the nation’s plans to launch a satellite during the IGY, but officials and the public alike also assumed that the country led the world in the field of space science and technology. To make matters worse, the Soviet Union capitalized on American anxiety over the small satellite in its propaganda campaign: Soviet media reported on the American public reaction, which fed into Soviet claims of technological superiority. “One moral that might be drawn,” the report reflected, “is that a propagandist cannot have his crow and eat it too.” The report included one positive note: fortunately, among the world leaders whose opinions were of most bearing to US global interests, final judgments about the military and technological implications of the Soviet achievement were yet to be made. In the end, the report concluded, the “most durable and useful gain” of Sputnik would very likely be the satellite’s contribution to Soviet credibility. Scientific discoveries and engineering information were secondary rewards.44
By 1957, the USIA had become further integrated into Washington’s foreign policy process. In February Eisenhower had made the USIA director a member of his Cabinet and the NSC, a distinction shared only by the director of the CIA. Newly appointed USIA Director Arthur Larson made the most of this opportunity, attending every Cabinet meeting whenever he was in Washington. In January 1957 Larson pushed for incorporating public relations into every department of the government, a plan that received support from the Cabinet.45 In the fall of 1957, shortly before Sputnik, Larson prepared a new set of guidelines for the agency. He hoped to move the USIA away from propaganda to factual reporting. In a bold move the agency banned the use of boastful or self-righteous tones, encouraged emphasizing shared interests, and recommended that programs target “opinion formers.”46
Although the mission of the USIA had become more refined by 1957 and the agency’s influence within Washington had increased, field officers struggled to present a positive image of US policies and American culture abroad even before Sputnik’s launch. After Little Rock, civil rights tensions were pulling the country apart and already undercutting US influence abroad, especially in African nations. Now the country was being mocked around the world, adding salt to the wounds of American pride. It quickly became clear that Sputnik had ini
tiated a new era and that the Soviet Union, much to US political leaders’ chagrin, could take the credit for opening the Space Age. USIA scrambled to do what it could to soften the blow.47
As William Traum, deputy director of the US Department of Commerce, wrote to the USIA, “[Sputnik’s] signal, and then the echoes of it, will continue to be irritating and ominous facts for a long time.” The best approach to dealing with the small satellite, in Traum’s view, was to recognize it but then “dilute the impact” abroad. The USIA, he stressed, should emphasize the great scientific achievements of the twentieth century because this approach would put Sputnik in its place, as a single event within a larger context of predominantly American achievements.48
Traum’s strategy mirrored what would become the US government’s official response. The Operations Coordinating Board (OCB) instructed that treatment of Soviet achievements should “be held to a minimum, to avoid giving gratuitous publicity to such activities.”49 OCB guidelines for public information about the Soviet and US satellite programs directed government departments and agencies to pivot attention away from the USSR and toward the US. And when discussing the US satellite program, “Statements and releases should reflect a sense of composure, assurance, and confidence.” The scientific, peaceful, and open commitments of the American program should be stressed. It was best to situate satellite development within the larger context of IGY activities, the OCB advised.50
In Sputnik’s wake the USIA pulled exhibits, produced new pamphlets, and searched for the best way to pivot attention away from space exploration. State Department and USIA staff working on the American Pavilion for the upcoming 1958 Brussels World’s Fair reevaluated their plans. The first fair since World War II, Expo ’58 was meant to usher in a new age when nuclear energy and advancements in science contributed to international cooperation and a renewed humanism.51 After Sputnik, the US exhibit team concentrated its efforts on displaying American culture and shied away from competing directly with Soviet shows of space capability and scientific advancements. As a USIA staff member observed in November 1957, “The advent of Sputnik puts a new face on a lot of things that deal with the image which America needs to present abroad.”52 The United States might not have been the global leader of the space race in the 1950s, but pavilion staff knew they could outdo the Soviet Union in fashion, consumer products, and displays of “the good life.” The fair was set to open in April 1958, leaving little time for exhibit staff to adapt their displays.53
Larson looked outside the space arena for other types of scientific and technological feats that could capture world public attention. He sent the Atomic Energy Commission his idea of using hydrogen bombs for slicing through mountains to create roads, exploding earth apart to dam rivers, and swiftly scooping out harbors. These types of large-scale spectacles would surely take attention away from space exploration. And, like Sputnik, they would demonstrate military and technological capability all in one blow. The OCB also searched for scientific and technological projects that would ensure that the global balance of power did not swing toward the Soviet Union: from desalination of seawater to drilling the deepest hole that had ever been drilled in the Earth’s crust, or aid-related programs such as airlifting rice to Indonesia.54
The CIA also proposed methods for curbing Sputnik’s impact. Why not organize an “International Medical Year”? Perhaps establishing a “University of the World” or financing hospitals would shift the world’s attention away from space exploration. Like Larson, the CIA’s proposals included the use of hydrogen bombs for “practical applications” like obliterating icebergs that blocked polar passages or reversing the direction of typhoons and thereby stopping them. If the US needed to compete in space, then broadcasting a song from a satellite with words like “Freedom shall be yours” would “have a tremendous propaganda effect,” reasoned CIA officials.55 Although this idea was not taken up by the US space program, it would become China’s approach more than a decade later. On April 24, 1970, China launched its first satellite, East Is Red 1, which played the first bars of a song about the Chinese revolution.56
Meanwhile, Korolev and his team of rocket engineers worked tirelessly on their second, larger satellite, designed for a canine passenger. At the top of another R-7 rocket and below a shiny metal sphere identical to Sputnik 1 sat Laika, a dog selected for her placid demeanor and adaptability to extreme conditions. Laika and her fellow canine cosmonauts came from the streets of Moscow. Strays, often mixed-breed and female like Laika, were cheap, trainable, and suitable for studying the effects of spaceflight on living bodies. A few days earlier, on October 31, Laika was bathed, groomed, fitted with sensors, and fastened inside her spacecraft with the aid of a harness and restraining chains. She then waited inside the capsule for three days, tucked between two large cushions while instruments monitored her vitals. At 5:30 a.m. Moscow time on November 3, the R-7 launched from Tiura-Tam, carrying Laika into space. She reached orbit alive. Her physiological data, transmitted through a telemetry system, suggested that weightlessness had little or no effect on vital functions, a key discovery for any future human mission. But the cabin temperature rose far too high, past 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Within five to seven hours the telemetry data no longer indicated signs of life.57
The next day, Laika’s flight made front-page headlines, including the New York Times’ Panglossian “Dog in Second Satellite Alive: May Be Recovered, Soviet Hints.” Walter Briggs, a reporter based in Tokyo, warned his American readers that even though “the ruthless manner in which Marshal Georgi Zhukov was ousted… gave many Japanese cause for criticism,” the success of Sputnik 2 “outweighed this loss of prestige.” Reading military significance into the launch, the Japanese press indicated that the flight confirmed Khrushchev’s boasts of an ICBM arsenal.58 Another journalist commented that “it is good that Sputnik 2 went up so soon after Zhukov went down,” drawing attention to Khrushchev’s political strategy.59 In Moscow, people supposedly were greeting each other with impressions of Sputnik’s “beep beep.”60
In Mexico, many saw the satellite launch as confirmation of a Soviet lead in science in general, not just space exploration. Sputnik outweighs “the greater breadth of US scientific superiority,” a confidential USIA report stated. Eight of ten people in Japan had heard the news and were aware of Sputnik’s Soviet origins. And in Europe, Sputnik 1 and 2 “had a substantial adverse effect on the relative military and scientific prestige of the United States,” according to USIA-sponsored opinion polling. The USIA again responded by situating the flight within the context of twentieth-century technological advances. When positioned alongside breakthroughs in American medicine, physics, and chemistry, the satellite would lose much of its symbolic weight, USIA officials hoped.61
A few days later, during a celebration of the fortieth anniversary of the Revolution on November 7, Khrushchev chided the United States. Dressed in a dark-blue suit, he spoke from a podium before an audience of four thousand for over three hours, on topics ranging from Communist doctrine to satellites to proposing a conference between the “East and West”: “Our satellites are circling the earth waiting for American satellites to join them and form a commonwealth of Sputniks.… The Soviet Sputniks proclaim the heights of the development of science and technology and of the entire economy of the Soviet Union.”62 His son Sergei recalled that his father was ecstatic about the satellite.63 But even as he boasted over space successes, the Hungarian crisis in 1956 had seeded doubt in the Soviet leader. Khrushchev spent much of 1957 consolidating his power, fearing both internal and external threats to his leadership. The Soviet satellites bolstered his position but did not resolve his political vulnerability.64
On the same day, on the other side of Earth, Eisenhower spoke to his country’s citizens from the Oval Office. As a reporter for Life magazine put it, “The two most powerful men in the world boasted at each other last week.”65 Instead of standing up at a podium at a mass event like Khrushchev, Eisenhower broadcast his remark
s to sixty million Americans sitting in front of their living-room television sets. Eisenhower had turned to Arthur Larson to write the text. In addition to addressing the nation’s scientific and technological position in the wake of Sputnik, Eisenhower wanted a trusted public diplomacy expert in the White House. He asked Larson to leave the directorship of the USIA and become the special assistant to the president. Larson’s staunch internationalist perspective on world affairs, and his appreciation of the potential consequences of soft power, would imbue many of Eisenhower’s speeches in the coming months.66 With the hope of tempering public anxiety, Eisenhower and Larson planned a series of speeches on Sputnik’s significance—or lack thereof.67
Speechwriting absorbed them for three days. “We are defending priceless spiritual values,” Eisenhower instructed Larson. He explained that his message need not be “materialistic” but instead inspirational and optimistic. The speech was one in a series that linked the advancement of science with national security, an association reiterated again and again by the Eisenhower administration.68
“As of today, the overall military strength of the free world is distinctly greater than that of Communist countries,” Eisenhower assured his audience on November 7. He showed off a flown nose cone of a Jupiter missile placed on a platform to his left, a demonstration of advanced reentry technology being developed by von Braun’s team in Huntsville, Alabama. But while Eisenhower emphasized American strength, he also acknowledged the need for more basic research, more science training, and more international scientific exchange to maintain global leadership.69
President Dwight D. Eisenhower shown with scale model of Jupiter C Missile nose cone during a speech given from the White House, November 7, 1957. (SMITHSONIAN NATIONAL AIR AND SPACE MUSEUM)
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