Editing Space Race (section)

==== US reactions ====
The Soviet success raised a great deal of concern in the United States. For example, economist Bernard Baruch wrote in an open letter titled "The Lessons of Defeat" to the ''[[New York Herald Tribune]]'': "While we devote our industrial and technological power to producing new model automobiles and more gadgets, the Soviet Union is conquering space. ... It is Russia, not the United States, who has had the imagination to hitch its wagon to the stars and the skill to reach for the moon and all but grasp it. America is worried. It should be."<ref>{{cite book|last1=Crompton|first1=Samuel|title=Sputnik/Explorer I: The Race to Conquer Space|year= 2007|publisher=Chelsea House Publications|location=New York City|isbn=978-0-7910-9357-3|page=4}}</ref>

Eisenhower ordered project Vanguard to move up its timetable and launch its satellite much sooner than originally planned.{{sfn|Brzezinski|2007|pp=254–67}} The December 6, 1957 [[Vanguard TV3|Project Vanguard launch failure]] occurred at [[Cape Canaveral Air Force Station]] in Florida. It was a monumental failure, exploding a few seconds after launch, and it became an international joke. The satellite appeared in newspapers under the names Flopnik, Stayputnik, Kaputnik,<ref name="O'Neill, Terry 2002">O'Neill, Terry. The Nuclear Age. San Diego: Greenhaven, Inc., 2002.(146)</ref> and Dudnik.<ref>Knapp, Brian. Journey into Space. Danbury: Grolier, 2004.(17)</ref> In the United Nations, the Soviet delegate offered the US representative aid "under the Soviet program of technical assistance to backwards nations."<ref name="O'Neill, Terry 2002"/> Only in the wake of this very public failure did von Braun's Redstone team get the go-ahead to launch their Jupiter-C rocket as soon as they could. In Britain, the US's Western Cold War ally, the reaction was mixed: some celebrated the fact that the Soviets had reached space first, while others feared the destructive potential that military uses of spacecraft might bring.<ref>Barnett, Nicholas. '"Russia Wins Space Race": The British Press and the Sputnik Moment', ''Media History'', (2013) 19:2, 182–95.</ref> The ''[[Daily Express]]'' predicted that the US would catch up to and pass the USSR in space; "never doubt for a moment that America would be successful".<ref name="time19571014">{{Cite web |date=1957-10-14 |title=THE NATION: Red Moon Over the U.S. |url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,862748,00.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090506101411/http://www.time.com:80/time/magazine/article/0,9171,862748,00.html |archive-date=2009-05-06 |access-date=2016-02-24 |publisher=TIME}}</ref>