Sixty years ago, the Soviet Union stunned everyone with the first successful launch of the world’s first artificial satellite. On October 4, 1957 a small sphere was sent to the space with purpose to transmit a bleep-bleep” radio signal. This caused a panic among Americans as they imagined Soviet atomic bomb in Earth’s orbit. This event sent the United States government and army into a spiral of activity. They had found themselves in the unusual position. America was the one who tries to catch up with Soviet technology. First artificial satellite Sputnik 1 started on what is now known as the Space Race.

If a few choices had been made very differently by either United States or Soviet Union, the history books nowadays would be very different.

Nikita Khrushchev became the president of Russia in 1953, and he had a big problem immediately. The Cold War was at its highest level, and Soviet Union was very vulnerable at that point. If real war ever started, American aircrafts from Western Europe, carrying atomic bombs, could be over Moscow in a few hours. Soviet technology would take much longer to reach the US territory. Khrushchev desperately needed a new weapon, something capable to stop US Army from believing they could win a war with blowing a first strike. Khrushchev needed a missile capable to hit the US territory in less than one hour after being launched.

So during the 1954, Soviet authorities gave an order to develop the first intercontinental ballistic missile in the World. This task was given to Sergei Korolev to develop such weapon. Developers immediately understood that this missile had to be big, capable to carry heavy Russian H-bombs. This bomb was named R-7. R-7 carrier needed to be fully capable of carrying and delivering a 3-ton nuclear warhead onto a target across 6,500 kilometers or 4,000 mi away. Soviets had missiles much bigger than any American missiles ever developed.

Just like his American colleagues, Sergei Korolev was fascinated by rockets and he dreamed about going into space and exploration and he immediately realized that the R7 would be good enough to send satellites into the Earth’s orbit. Mikhail Tikhonravov, a Russian designer made a proposal in 1956 for a satellite that could be launched by the R-7, and in October, Korolev was permitted to continue with the project.

The goal was to send the satellite during the “International Geophysical Year”, which was from July 1957 to the end of 1958. For Soviets and Khrushchev, the satellite was not a main problem. They needed a missile that is fully capable to hit the United States, nothing else was more important.

The military of the Soviet Union had variety of ideas. For them, number one priority was to get a fully operational ICBM. Just satellite launching for them would be only time wasting on something that was considered a scientific nonsense back in those days, so that project was placed on hold.

Korolev was willing to gamble and he visited the heads of the military and tried to convince directly Nikita Khrushchev. He pointed out on propaganda value of this project and how it would be important for Soviet Union to become the first country in the world to put an object in Earth’s orbit. He was successful in convincing the Soviet president to support the idea of launching the first satellite with the R-7 missile.