The US space program during the late 50s and 60s was an outright public spectacle, with live coverage of launches and developments dominating news cycles, with an amazing level of public detail available. We've all seen the montages of early rockets blowing up, and my understanding is that most of this is not declassified footage, but things the public had ready access to at the time. My question is, what lead to our space program being so public-facing almost from the beginning, given that it ultimately had roots as a weapons-development operation, especially when pre-Sputnik, it seemingly was largely a directly millitary-run operation with little public fanfare, and given that the Soviet Union, by contrast, treated their program in this manner throughout the duration of the Soviet era? Was it a strategic, political decision, something forced by pure public and media mania in response to the Sputnick crisis, or something else?