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The Sputnik crisis spurred a whole chain of U.S. initiatives, from large to small, many of them initiated by the Department of Defense.

• Entering Space Race, as mentioned, including the creation of NASA in 1958 and Project MercuryProject Mercury was the United States's first successful manned spaceflight program. It ran from 1959 through 1963 with the goal of putting a man in orbit around the Earth. Early planning and research was carried out by NACA, while the program was officia.
• Education programs initiated to foster a new generation of engineers. One of the more remarkable and remembered things that came out of this was the concept of " New Maths".
• Dramatically increased support for scientific research. For 1959Events January-February January 1 Cultivars of plants named after this date must be named in a modern language, not in Latin. January 1 Cuba: Fulgencio Batista flees Havana when forces of Fidel Castro advance January 2 CBS Radio cuts four soap operas: Bac, Congress increased the National Science FoundationThe National Science Foundation (NSF is an independent United States government agency responsible for supporting basic science research. It operates mainly through the establishment of research grants, particularly to universities or through individual g appropriation to $134 million, almost $100 million higher than the year before. By 1968, the NSF budget would stand at nearly $500 million.
• The Polaris missile program.
• Project managementProject management is the ensemble of activities (such as tasks) concerned with successfully achieving a set of goals. This includes planning, scheduling and maintaining progress of the activities that comprise the project. Reduced to its simplest project as an area of inquiry and an object of much scrutiny, leading up to the modern concept of projectA project is a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product or service. Temporary means that the project has an end date. Unique means that the project's end result is different than the results of other functions of the organization. It can a management and standardized project models such as the DoD Program Evaluation and Review Technique, PERT, invented for Polaris.
• The decision by President Kennedy, who campaigned in 1960 on closing "the missile gap," to deploy 1000 Minuteman missiles, far more ICBMs than the Soviets had at the time.
• At The Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency initiating, in 1969, a computer network project called ARPANET, which would later turn into the Internet.