Sputnik: The Shock of the Century

A 12-year old American child sets out to make a documentary about the Apollo Mission, titled "The Spirit of Apollo." After reading dozens of books about the space program, on one hand, she finds her focus shifting from the American effort to land a man on the moon to the Soviet's side of the story. At the same time, she is troubled by the American Space Program's roots in Nazi rocket science. Through the process of research, she comes to realize that the spirit of aerospace is best embodied by Sergei Pavlovich Korolev, the relentless visionary of the Soviet program, and the purest pivotal moment of the space program was the launch of the Sputnik, the world's first artificial satellite. The filmmaker ended up abandoning the Spirit of Apollo, and, instead, paid homage to the Sputnik. More importantly, the documentary touches on the global political consequences of the space race: it elevated traditional warfare into nuclear warfare, and by balancing the capacities of the superpowers, it created that delicate balance of power, hinging - to this day - on the concept of mutual assurance of destruction. The 8th grader director asks difficult questions about the price of national security and interviews Sergei Khrushchev, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev's son, confidant and space engineer, to validate her point that the space race actually laid the crucial foundation for our détente.