Oct 4 1982
From The Space Library
The Washington Post noted the 25th anniversary of the USSR's launch of an orbiting satellite, saying that "no single event in history assaulted America's image of itself as did Sputnik." Subsequent U.S. space ventures "did nothing but tarnish that image," the Army and Navy arguing over which would launch the first satellite, while the Soviet Union orbited dogs, rats, and mice and took pictures of the dark side of the Moon.
The Navy got the first opportunity December 6, 1957, with Vanguard on the pad at Cape Canaveral and "literally blew it." The Army was given four days in January 1958 to launch Explorer from the Cape. When the launch finally took place after being delayed two days by unsafe winds, sea air had so corroded Army tracking radios in the Caribbean that the Cape never received the signal that the satellite was in orbit. In 1961 "the roof fell in" when Yuri A. Gagarin became the first man to orbit the Earth, and Gherman Titov orbited 17 times. The "best U.S. orbital effort that year was that of Ham the chimpanzee." Not until 1962 did John Glenn orbit the Earth, and then for only three orbits. By the, end of that year the Soviet Union had sent four cosmonauts into_ space.
President John F. Kennedy had told Congress May 25, 1961, that the U.S. goal would be to put a man on the Moon and return him safely "before the end of the decade." By the time a three-man crew in Apollo 8 orbited the Moon in 1968 at Christmastime, "the space race was over. What happened to the Soviets?" Former JSC Director Christopher C. Kraft said in an interview that the Soviet Union "abandoned their moon program. We took the wind right out of their sails." Critics said that not all of the effects of the space race were good: it "spurred U.S. determination to improve the quality of schools and students, but whether that succeeded is debatable" Kennedy "never saw the flight of anything to which he gave the initial impetus"; President Johnson, "who did more for the Apollo manned program than any president, suffered through the fatal Apollo fire"; President Nixon "basked in all of the Apollo triumphs only to answer for Watergate." One educator said "Sputnik is one reason Johnny can't read today. He's more interested in Pac-Man, which you might call an outgrowth of Sputnik." If Sputnik led to Pac-Man, the Washington Post said, it also "helped to pro-duce the high technology of the computer revolution . . .Today's state-of-the-art computer processes 5 million operations a second" W Post, Oct 4/82, A-1)
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