Question by mark: How did sputnik show up shake American confidence? what was the national response?
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Answer by pao d historian
it is somehow a great blow to America because many thought that America will be the first country to explore space at that time. the response is that America spend more million dollars to make better satellites and space stations.
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PanamaJoe says
What really shook up Americans was that if the Soviets could put an object in orbit, then they could launch an object that could hit the USA, like an atom bomb! This terrified America! Eisenhower and his administration kept raising military spending so we could stay ahead of the USSR, and here they caught us napping!
The response, of course, was to rush an object into space! we thought we could out-do the soviets: our object would be bigger, or more complicated, or stay up longer, or something, but our efforts kept ending in failure. Finally, we put up an object that was second-rate effort.