For this week’s blog, I explored NASA’s description of Sputnik, reading its brief historical timeline titled “Sputnik and The Dawn of the Space Age”. This website describes the launch of Sputnik as causing developments in various fields like technology and science, starting the Space Age and the Space Race, and resulting in the creation of …
Continue reading “Delanie Tarvin: Sputnik and the Dawn of the Space Age”
“How Sputnik Changed US Education” is an article written by, Alvin Powell in the Harvard Gazette. In this Article, Powell gives a new perspective of how Sputnik changed the US education system. Powell argues that schools in the US felt a sense of urgency to dedicate more time to science and teaching the future generation…
For this Tuesday’s class, I was responsible for presenting the class with a brief, three minute or less, history of the Cold War to put the space race into context. Before class, I thought it was important to contextualize the space rate within the history of nuclear weapons and nuclear proliferation. At the end of …
Continue reading “Andrew Pregnall: The Cold War and the Space Race”
In 1957 the Soviet launch of the Sputnik satellite generated quite the stir around the world. Given the degree of political polarization at the time between West and East, it was only natural that reactions to the event varied. In the United States, there was a sense that the Soviets had beaten them to the …
Continue reading “Franco Spain After the Sputnik – Dan Crosson”
Diana Trilling’s article, “Dog-Lovers, Three Liberals and A Dixiecrat Flee Sputnik Reality”, dissects the relationship between Sputnik and the destruction of the peace of mind shared by many Americans. The article begins with the discussion of American protesters being consumed with the rights of the dog in the Sputnik satellite. Trilling notes that the…
Jason Arquette Professor Hirsh Blog 10g October 17th, 2017 In 1957 the Soviet Union launched Sputnik: the world’s first artificial satellite. Plans to build the orbital space technology can be traced as far back as 1954 when Soviet scientist Sergei Korolev passed his blueprints along to the nation’s leaders. By the time the President Eisenhower…
Sputnik had a far greater impact on American technology than it has been credit for in the past. It may have been the first man-made object to orbit the earth, a fact that overshadowed the contributions of other nations involved in the IGY and damaged American pride, but it forced Americans to reevaluate their academic …
I began research for this blog with a preliminary look at Wikipedia’s page on the Space Race to orient myself to the competition between the US and USSR for spaceflight capability and supremacy. To go deeper into the subject, I chose to look at magazines from the time, focusing on publications from 1957-1963, to gain …
Continue reading “Cece Burger: Space Race Debate Grows- Nation’s Business Magazine”
The Cold War is marked with high tensions and anxieties centered around the east vs. west hysteria that drove the cultural conflict. Throughout the era, hallmark events such as the plethora of proxy wars, the Cuban Missile Crisis, or McCarthyism set the global stage for politics. One event, however, stands out above the rest in …
The entirety of the US vs USSR space race began on October 4th, 1957 with the launching of Sputnik. This Soviet satellite was attached to a R-7 ICBM, that also proved that the USSR was capable of a nuclear strike against the United States. [1] They went on to launch Sputnik II only a month later, …