New Moons Rising - GPS Declassified: From Smart Bombs to Smartphones - page 4

relentless looking around for possible sabotage?” the New York Daily News
asked. 12 The Baltimore-based Glenn L. Martin Company, the prime contrac-
tor for the Vanguard rockets, and General Electric, the subcontractor for the
engines, blamed each other for the problem. 13 Sell orders forced New York
Stock Exchange officials to halt trading in Martin's stock the day after the explo-
sion. 14 The launch pad fiasco came just eleven days after a brash Texas sena-
tor with presidential ambitions, Lyndon Baines Johnson, began hearings on
Sputnik in the Senate Preparedness Subcommittee. That same day, November
25, President Dwight D. Eisenhower suffered a mild stroke. Many wondered
if he was healthy enough to continue as president, and there were some calls
for him to step down. 15 American preeminence in world affairs and military
and technological prowess, taken for granted since the end of World War II,
was being openly questioned, as evidenced by Johnson remarking after the
Vanguard failure, “How long, how long, oh God, how long will it take us to
catch up with the Russians' two satellites?” 16
From a modern perspective, with partisan bickering over foreign affairs rou-
tine and lack of faith in government pervasive, the reaction to the Sputnik
launches and Vanguard failure may not seem unusual, but Americans viewed
the federal government differently then. A 2013 Pew Research Center survey
found only 26 percent of Americans trusted the government to do what is right
“just about always” or “most of the time.” That is slightly better than 2010,
when the figure was 22 percent, but the trend has been mostly downward for
decades. When Pew first polled the question of trust in government in 1958,
as part of the National Election Study, 73 percent said they trusted the govern-
ment to do what is right most of the time. 17
The satellite woes came at a time when American idealism was being shat-
tered in popular culture as well. Over the preceding decade, television had
transformed American home life. About 3.9 million U.S. households, less than
one in ten, had a television in 1950 . 18 By 1957, the figure had grown to 38.9 mil-
lion of the nation's 49.5 million households, nearly four in five.19 19 tv advertis-
ing expenditures reflected the growing power of the industry. Between 1950
and 1960, ad spending on television grew ninefold, from $170 million to $1.53
billion, propelling the medium past radio and magazines and fueling a trend
toward newspaper consolidation. 20 But the tv business was rocked by scandal
when it became public in 1957 that quiz shows—so popular they represented
five of the top eight shows—were rigged. 21 Later in the year, the public also
learned that record companies were giving kickbacks—“payola”—to radio disc