Roots of the Space Race: Sputnik and the Language of U.S. News in 1957

Abstract

When the Soviet Union launched Sputnik in October 1957, it also launched the space race. A qualitative assessment of the coverage given this event by the New York Times, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and Los Angeles Times finds depictions of Sputnik in dramas of defeat, of national mortification, and of doom and dread. This study concluded that a 23-inch aluminum ball able (only) to send radio signals to earth was not in itself significant, but the language of reaction and interpretation was.