After the Soviets launched Sputnik, the first man-made satellite to orbit Earth, panic and a media riot erupted in the West. But the USSR's leader, Nikita Khrushchev, and his rocket expert, Sergei Korolev, were already organizing another demonstration of Communist superiority. Korolev, known to the West simply as the Chief Designer, quickly launched a satellite into space carrying the first living creature, a dog named Laika. Once again the world was astounded.
Officials in the United States reacted intensely. John McCormack, a member of the House Committee on Science and Astronautics, said that if the U.S. did not immediately overcome the Soviet Union in the space race, the nation faced nothing less than extinction. As suggestions flowed for the best ways to counterattack on the space front of the Cold War, calls went out for a "missile czar" to handle the "missile gap".
In response, the Eisenhower administration created NASA, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, in 1958. For the first time in human history a single agency existed that exclusively promoted the exploration of space. And suddenly billions of dollars were funneled into an age-old dream.
NASA gave the American space program a jump-start by designing and launching a series of impressive spacecraft: the Pioneer probes; TIROS I, the first weather satellite; and Echo, the first communications satellite. The Agency's successes began to ease Cold War fears that the United States would be defeated if it didn't catch the Soviet Union. But even so, the Soviets' Chief Designer seemed unbeatable, and his technical sorcery left the Americans reeling. The US wouldn't really catch up until its wizard, Wernher von Braun, worked a little magic of his own with the Apollo program in 1968.
