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much time it took to fuel the huge rocket and how difficult it was to hide. War, it was now thought, could still break out because the missile was vulnerable to preemptive strikes and could be destroyed on the launchpad by U.S. bombers, rendering its deterrent value nil. Washington, after all, already knew Tyura-Tam’s exact geographic coordinates thanks to its spy planes, and the R-7 could be launched only from that one location because it was too big to be moved on anything other than railcars and needed a pad the size of several football fields from which to lift off. It also used the wrong kind of propellant, not to mention a staggeringly impractical 250 tons of it, requiring cumbersome fueling infrastructure and hours of wasteful preparation time because its tanks could not be prefilled with liquid oxygen that instantly evaporated. The R-7, in short, could not be hidden, moved, or fired on short notice—making it a sitting duck in the event of a surprise American attack.

As with many first-generation weapons, its principal value was in its demonstrative effect; the dream of deterrence via an invulnerable ICBM fleet was realistic, if not yet a reality. Already one of Korolev’s rival designers, Mikhail Yangel, was working on a series of successor missiles that addressed the R-7’s flaws. Yangel, a few months earlier, had successfully tested the R-12, an intermediate range missile that used storable nitric acid—Glushko’s preferred oxidizer—instead of slow-loading liquid oxygen. With Glushko’s backing, Yangel was now proposing an expanded intercontinental version of the missile, the R-16, which would be a third the size of the original R-7 and capable of silo or mobile launch on less than thirty minutes’ notice. Glushko, who could not help but envy the political accolades that the Chief Designer was garnering for what was essentially a triumph of his own engines, was lobbying Nedelin to push for the R-16. It would take three to four years for the superior weapon to go from blueprint to deployment phase, but the Americans did not know any of this. For now, at least, the R-7 was still the only ICBM in existence on either side of the ideological divide. And Nikita Khrushchev was not about to let anyone forget that he, and he alone, had exclusive domain over the power to rain destruction anywhere on the planet.

The point was not just that the Soviet Union possessed this devastating new weapon, but that Khrushchev wielded it personally. The R-7 was his creation—Korolev was merely an instrument of his will—and it was to him that the political accolades ultimately fell, a point that Pravda would hammer home whenever possible. “In his able proposals,” the paper would glowingly note, “there is evidence again and again of the great conviction in the triumph of Soviet rocket technology.” Likewise, Sputnik celebrated his glory (“he participates in the discussions of all the most vital experiments”) and validated his vision (he “directs the development of the major directions of technical progress in the country”); he would invoke the satellite in virtually every speech for months to come. For a leader still deeply insecure about his own authority, Sputnik was a boon. It was the glue that Khrushchev had been looking for to cement his grip on power. Everyone knew that it was his rocket up there causing an international sensation. Everyone would associate his name with one of the greatest technological triumphs of the twentieth century. With luck, he might even ascend to that rarefied pantheon of Russia’s Greats: Peter, Catherine, Stalin. They had been immortalized for their terrestrial conquests; Khrushchev had just expanded that empire into outer space.

For the embattled Soviet leader, October 4 had augured an astonishing reversal of political fortune: his final rival had been eliminated, forgotten in the furor over Sputnik’s success, and he alone had emerged as the prime beneficiary of the satellite’s conferred grandeur. Khrushchev could now claim credit for making the Soviet Union a genuine superpower, a true technological match for