Excerpts from Books and Wikipedia
"The world got its first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1, courtesy of the Soviet Union. A huge triumph for the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, the launch caused great consternation in the West. . . . Convinced that US defenses were inadequate and that a missile gap had opened between their nations, Americans demanded that money be found to rectify the situation. This resulted in a very real missile gap, in United State's favor." [1001 Days] "In 1953, Russia also tested an H-bomb, a mere nine months after the American test. Moreover, the Soviet government had devoted considerable resources to exploiting German wartime technology on rocketry. By 1955 the USSR was mass-producing a medium-range ballistic missile (the SS-3); by 1957 it had fired an intercontinental ballistic missile over a range of five thousand miles, using the same rocket engine which shot Sputnik, the earth’s first artificial satellite, into orbit in October of the same year. Shocked by these Russian advances, and by the implication that both U.S. cities and U.S. bomber forces might be vulnerable to a sudden Soviet strike, Washington committed massive resources to its own intercontinental ballistic missiles . . ."