Heck, even the launch of Sputnik, probably the closest the Soviets have ever come to truly matching our capabilities by beating us into space, only happened because then-President Dwight Eisenhower deliberately allowed them to do so, thinking that if America actually did launch a spy satellite into space first, because it technically contradicted elements of international law, the Soviets would have exploited that to essentially throw a massive temper tantrum across the world via Soviet-orchestrated international protests. Eisenhower even went as far as to prevent Werner von Braun from launching such a satellite on January 1957 (well ahead of Sputnik in other words). In other words, the Soviets only got that far due to America essentially granting the USSR a handicap. In fact, the U-2 spy flights verified that we were well ahead of military satellites, rockets, and ICBMs. We had such a huge lead, in fact, that Eisenhower saw absolutely no need to expand the space program at all. Too bad the media seemed to think otherwise and engaged in hysterics, which ultimately led to those who were running for President after Eisenhower, even Nixon, pushing it for political gain (particularly LBJ, who darkly warned that the Soviets would bomb us “like kids dropping rocks onto cars from freeway overpasses”). And here’s another thing not known about Sputnik: Most of its legacy and Soviet footholds involved putting small dogs into squat metal containers and then shooting them into a high altitude, sometimes killing them in the process.
On a related note, during that same time, we had developed various intricate weather tracking systems and maritime global positioning systems, and in fact, by August 24, 1960, one of our satellites yielded pictures that covered over 1.5 million square feet of Soviet territory, which included detailed photographs of “64 airfields, 26 surface-to air missile sites, and a major rocket launch facility,” and within days of this managed to pick up more information than had been gained with the earlier U2 flights, with the Soviets having no comparable surveillance capabilities.
Now, if it were Tsarist Russia, I’ll admit that they might have us beat regarding at least high quality photographs. But the USSR being a serious military or even technological threat is a bit laughable. Don’t get me wrong, the Soviets were definitely a grave threat overall, especially in terms of the espionage field and sphere of influences (after all, they had taken over Hollywood, the State Department, labor unions, and other high places via subterfuge, and besides which, Soviet spies were the reason why the Soviets had access to nuclear weapons, which inferior to our own or not are STILL a pretty grave threat especially regarding the Western Powers), but militarily or even technologically, they’re not even that big of a threat.
“Too bad the media seemed to think otherwise and engaged in hysterics”
They were doing a good job in their primary mission: that of agents of the USSR in the Cold War.