Nasa Podcast
Podcast of the NASA
This document is a recording of an interview made by the journalist Jane Platt. It deals with Sputnik, the satellite a Russian rocket launched into space on 4th October 1957.
The first interviewee, John Casani, a NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory veteran, explains that it was quite a shock to see this device flying over their heads. He adds that people were scared. Some more information is brought by another man who works for JPL: Blaine Baggett. He is the producer of an in-depth documentary on Sputnik. He tells Platt that if Civilians felt horrified and considered Sputnik as a technological Pearl Harbor ( to them it was a bad message concerning their status as world leaders), people in the know were aware the USSR were far ahead of the US in that field. Still, when a month later, the Soviets sent Sputnik II up with a dog on board, everyone was scared. If , they were able to lob such a heavy thing into space, they were also able to lob a nuclear weapon towards the US.
The last part is an extract of an interview of an historian called Walter McDougall. At the time Sputnik was launched he told people about his fears about the future belonging to Communism, which was, to put it in a nutshell, what the American people dreaded the most.