I've found a lot of info on how public opinion moved in response to Sputnik, the mental impact, etc.
What I'm wondering is, did the US public (and/or the US gov) know about Sputnik beforehand? Or was the announcement something like, "The USSR has a satellite in space! It'll be flying over us every 98 minutes for the next few weeks." Were people freaked out in real-time? Would they have been shocked and frightened AS they learned about it?
Or were they more or less aware that something like this was inevitable?
Thanks!
The space race was all about appearances, so you'd be sure that Russia was basically shouting from the rooftops about any successful developments in space race technology. They knew it was being launched, it was widely-reported on in American newspapers.
Listen now," said the NBC radio network announcer on the night of October 4, 1957, "for the sound that forevermore separates the old from the new." Next came the chirping in the key of A-flat from outer space that the Associated Press called the "deep beep-beep." Emanating from a simple transmitter aboard the Soviet Sputnik satellite, the chirp lasted three-tenths of a second, followed by a three-tenths-of-a-second pause. This was repeated over and over again until it passed out of hearing range of the United States. - quote from article below
It was not technically a "surprise" at all. The Soviets announced they were going to do it well beforehand. The Soviets were launching Sputnik to coincide with the International Geophysical Year of 1957-1958. Both the US and USSR had, over a year prior to Sputnik's launch, agreed to coordinate some of their satellite plans. (The logo of the IGY featured a satellite on it.) So it was pretty plain to any scientific and official advisors that both the US and USSR were planning to try and launch artificial satellites in late 1957-early 1958. This was announced in the New York Times as early as September 195_6_. ("U.S. and Soviet Link Earth Satellite Plan," New York Times, 16 September 1956, page 1.) Soviet scientists had been talking about satellite plans openly starting in 1955.
The Soviets did not actually keep their Sputnik plans secret at all. The "shocked" reaction was one of political and press manufacture, something Eisenhower understood well and resented. The newspapers spread a state of near terror (gigantic headlines along the lines of "RUSSIAN SATELLITE CIRCLING EARTH"), the politicians looking to make political points seized upon it, everyone wrung their hands about the surprise of it all.
The pressures the public reaction put on Eisenhower, in terms of military spending, played no small part in his later denouncement of the "military-industrial complex" as a nefarious force in American politics.