On Saturday October 4, 1957, Americans all over the country listened at their radio sets to the sound of a beacon being projected from a 183-pound man-made satellite orbiting earth at 18,000 mph.1 Given their intensity, Americans might have been celebrating the first US satellite launch.2 Instead, the country erupted into a state of hysteria, as the fear was confirmed that the Soviet Socialist Republic had pulled ahead of the US in an event that what would later be referred to as the largest defeat of the Cold War. What occurred over the course the next year could be described as nothing short of a crisis in confidence of the American people and their way of life. Continue reading