Happy Sputnik Day!

"Each of these
first rockets was like a beloved woman for us," [former space program director Boris Chertok] said. "We were in
love with every rocket, we desperately wanted it to blast off
successfully. We would give our hearts and souls to see it flying."

This very rational exuberance, and Korolyov's determination, were the key to Sputnik's success.

So was happenstance.

As described by the former scientists, the world's first orbiter was
born out of a very different Soviet program: the frantic development of
a rocket capable of striking the United States with a hydrogen bomb.
[...]
"The key reason behind the emergence of Sputnik was the Cold War
atmosphere and our race against the Americans," Chertok said. "The
military missile was the main thing we were thinking of at the moment."

(...)we have, for the
last 35 years or so, been victims of our early successes in space,
unable to recapture the magic sparked by the launch of Sputnik.
Perhaps, if the launch of Sputnik had been greeted in many corners not
with alarm but instead with muted congratulations, or even a shrug,
things would have been different: we would not have made the rapid
early advances of the late 1950s and 1960s, but instead a more
gradual—and more sustainable—progression of achievements. However, the
geopolitical situation of the era, not to mention domestic politics in
the US, made such an approach untenable.