On Oct. 1, 1957, a flicker of light reached into the dark sky over the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The Soviets had launched Sputnik (“traveling companion”) the world’s first man-made satellite. Americans (pardon the expression) went ballistic.

“Here in the capital,” reported Eric Sevareid on CBS radio, “responsible men think and talk of little but the metal spheroid that now looms larger in the eye of the mind than the planet it circles around.” Before Sputnik, Americans thought the Kremlin’s technology was a joke. When rumors circulated about the danger of smuggled Soviet “suitcase” bombs, the joke was “first they have to perfect the suitcase.” After Sputnik, nobody laughed.