Sputnik–what does the word mean?
Does it have a broader, symbolic meaning, or is it merely an acronym?
It’s Russian for traveler.
Спутник
Well… “Fellow traveler”. Not someone traveling alone. Someone traveling with you. Someone traveling alone is “putnik”.
“Sputnik” was the first artificial satellite. A radio beacon which went “beep”.
That it was launched by USSR at the height of the Cold War meant the “Space Race” was on.
This was when JFK stated that the US would put a man on the moon within a decade.
The end result of Sputnik was the ICBM’s and MAD.
Well, yes, we all know that, but I don’t see how that answers the question.
The end result of the Sputnik launch was that the US got interested in the development of space launch vehicles and satellites, and ultimately exploration of the moon and interplanetary bodies. While the initial investment was in the military application of intermediate and intercontinenal ballistic missiles (aided on both sides by German engineers who worked on the WWII German Aggregat program) which drove the need for and investment in high reliability, but the most enduring legacy has been for space launch vehicles, resulting in the Global Positioning System, satellite telecommunications, Earth weather surveillance, and of course space exploration.
Stranger
Not really. Sputnik was launched in 1957 when Eisenhower was President. Kennedy became President in 1961 and declared the goal of landing on the moon later that same year. It was prompted by the Soviets’ success in putting a man in space.
Close. In 1958, in response to the USSR launching Sputnik, Ike created NASA and had it absorb the NACA, JPL, and the USAF’s Man In Space Soonest programs. JFK didn’t declare a moon race until after Alan Shepard’s Mercury flight and a disappointing discussion about when the US could catch up with the Soviets in the Space Race. I think it took about halfway through the Gemini program before the US passed the USSR.
Well, in English fellow-traveler especially during the Cold War, often had a different meaning: a person who sympathizes with communism without being an official member of the Party. The satellite was not named after the communist sympathizers. The English political term is a literal translation of a different Russian word попутчик (poputchik). I don’t know Russian, so I can’t comment on the shades of meaning between Спутник and попутчик.
Спутник and попутчик are synonyms, with almost no difference in meaning (the main one being попутчик may mean someone traveling your way but not with you, while спутник always means someone with you).
And of course Sputnik was not named after communist sympathizers 
It was a satellite - it was traveling with Earth.
I have always been puzzled by the fact that the Soviets were so far ahead of the US in the space race in the 50’s, given that Operation Paperclip had decanted Werner von Braun and so many of his fellow Nazi rocket scientists into the US at the end of WWII.
Did the Soviet Union manage to get hold of many, or any, of the Nazi scientists or was their rocket science totally homegrown?
Of course Soviets took a lot of technology and scientists from Germany.
As for why they were first - priorities. Russians badly needed a propaganda win. Americans were quite “meh” about it. Until they were upstaged - then it became much higher priority.
Interesting link, thanks.
Other way around. Sputnik was one result of the ICBMs. Sputnik was a propaganda event because of the military implications. A rocket capable of putting a satellite into orbit is a rocket capable of putting a bomb into your backyard.
While working at the Redstone Arsenal, Von Braun and his team were severely restricted. Secretary of State Charles Wilson FORBADE the NACA and any other US organizations from going into Earth orbit. After Sputnik, Von Braun’s team was still forbidden because higher ups thought it’d be better if the US Navy’s Vanguard orbited our first satellites, because the Vanguard was built by Americans instead of the Thor and Jupiter C rockets which were built by Germans. It was only after several Vanguards blew up on the launch pad or not far off the launch pad was Von Braun allowed to launch into orbit.
The US had a huge edge in bombers and bomber-deliverable weapons during the 40’s and 50’s. As a result, the motivation for the US to start an ICMB race was pretty limited. And on the otherside, the Russians had a lot of motivation to develop a weapon that would make the US bomber advantage irrelevant. And Kruschev saw ICBMs as a relatively cheap defense solution, as compared to fielding the huge armies that were draining Soviet coffers.
Plus the US program (possibly because it wasn’t a high priority) was bogged down in the inter-service rivalries, with the Navy, Army and airforce all having programs with funding getting shifted between them chaotically.
Finally, Kruschev just really liked rockets (his son would become a rocket engineer) and he was willing to let his rocket scientists pursue scientific projects along side the ICBM work.
The American military hierarchy did not trust von Braun and his crew, and probably are better characterized as being actively hostile. They did not like his Nazi past, didn’t trust his apparent conversion, didn’t want to give him credit for anything or any power with the system, and resented his fame as a popularizer which made him the public face of space travel - which they also hated because they wanted nothing from space other than shooting missiles at the Russians.
Sputnik forced the hands of people who did not want a civilian ever to enter space and absolutely did not want a civilian to have control over space. Without Sputnik the military would have owned space forever.
The classic explanation for some of the early successes of the Soviet program, vs. some fairly visible failures in ours, was that “Their Germans are better than our Germans”.
They weren’t. We had the best. We had the best of everything and they had nothing. (Well, some great homegrown talent though not huge amounts of it.) Which only made them determined to get ahead of us in something, anything. It turned out to be in space. It didn’t have to be: it could have been any individual thing. Space happened to be psychologically devastating. Space is directly overhead and that made it threatening. The Soviets couldn’t carry through a threat in 1957, but that didn’t matter. Our fear and paranoia were miles past sufficient.