what's the impotance of Sputnik's launch?

Question

how did it affect the Cold War?
Why were the Americans scared?

Answer 1

That's all true, but nobody mentioned the most obvious facts: It was the first manmade object to orbit the earth, and the beginning of the sattellite technology that we rely on today for radio and tv broadcasting, telephone communication, mapping and navigation, weather prediction, astronomy, and many other applications.
If could be said that it was the beginning of the Space Age.

Answer 2

At a time when the United States and the Soviet Union were locked in a cold war, Sputnik showed a technological capability that was beyond the reach of the US. Americans feared that satellites would spy on them, disrupt communications, and possibly launch weapons at a helpless America.

The US immediately sped up their own space program, which became an important element of the cold war. When President Kennedy declared plans to go to the moon, his primary motivation was to show superiority over the Soviets.The subsequent "space race" did indeed lead to many important advances, including improved missile technology, communications satellites, weather monitoring and more. It also contributed to the eventual bankrupting of the Soviet Union, and its final collapse.

Answer 3

The most dangerous consequence for the Cold War was the whole misguided "missile gap" hysteria, and the enormous over-reaction by the Kennedy administration, which speeded up nuclear proliferation at an unprecedented pace.

"The surprise launch of Sputnik 1, coupled with the spectacular failure of the first two Project Vanguard launch attempts, shocked the United States, which responded with a number of early satellite launches, including Explorer I, Project SCORE, Advanced Research Projects Agency and Courier 1B. Sputnik also led to the creation of NASA and major increases in U.S. Government spending on scientific research and education."

"The launch of Sputnik 1 inspired writer Herb Caen to coin the term "beatnik" in an article about the Beat Generation in the San Francisco Chronicle on April 2, 1958."

"Sputnik program : Impact" : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sputnik#Impact

"The shock of the Sputnik launch was so great throughout America that even congresswoman Clare Boothe Luce commented on the launch, referring to Sputnik's beeps as "an intercontinental outer-space raspberry to a decade of American pretensions that the American way of life was a gilt-edged guarantee of our national superiority." "

"The Sputnik crisis spurred a whole chain of U.S. initiatives, from large to small, many of them initiated by the Department of Defense."

"- Within 2 days, calculation of the Sputnik Orbit (joint work by UIUC Astronomy Dept. and Digital Computer Lab.)
- 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 formally brought the U.S. into the Space Race by signing the National Aeronautics and Space Act, creating NASA and later Project Mercury.
- Education programs initiated to foster a new generation of engineers. One of the more remarkable and remembered things that came out of this was the concept of "New Math".
- Dramatically increased support for scientific research. For 1959, Congress increased the National Science Foundation 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 Kennedy, who campaigned in 1960 on closing the "missile gap", to deploy 1000 Minuteman missiles, far more ICBMs than the Soviets had at the time."

"Sputnik crisis" : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sputnik_crisis

"Missile gap" : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missile_gap

Answer 4

impotance...haha