Sputnik Crisis - US Response

US Response

The Sputnik spurred a series of U.S. initiatives:

• Within two days, calculation of the Sputnik orbit (joint work by UIUC Astronomy Dept. and Digital Computer Lab).
• Increased emphasis on the Navy's existing Project Vanguard to launch an American satellite into orbit, and a revival of the Army's Explorer program that preceded Vanguard in launching the first American satellite into orbit on January 31, 1958.
• By February 1958, the political and defense communities had recognized the need for a high-level Department of Defense organization to execute R&D projects and created the Advanced Research Projects Agency, which later became the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency or DARPA.
• On July 29, 1958, President Eisenhower signed the National Aeronautics and Space Act, creating NASA.
• Education programs were initiated to foster a new generation of engineers.
• Dramatically Increased support for scientific research. For 1959, Congress increased the National Science Foundation (NSF) appropriation to $134 million, almost $100 million higher than the year before. By 1968, the NSF budget would stand at nearly $500 million.
• The Polaris missile program
• Project management as an area of inquiry and an object of much scrutiny, leading up to the modern concept of project management and standardized project models such as the DoD Program Evaluation and Review Technique, PERT, invented for Polaris.
• The decision by President John F. Kennedy, who campaigned in 1960 on closing the "missile gap", to deploy 1,000 Minuteman missiles, far more ICBMs than the Soviets had at the time.