In 27 January 1967, the Apollo flight test program started in tragedy as three astronauts died in a capsule fire during a launch pad rehearsal. The cause of the fire is still unknown, but the pure oxygen environment of the capsule was a major contributing factor. Astronauts Virgil ("Gus") Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee died in the fire. The accident set the first Apollo launch back to 11 October 1968 due to the need for extensive capsule redesign.(152)( AU-18 Space Handbook)

also inlcuded some khrushchev's quotes. threads of the 60s: orbital h bomb:

You do not have 50- or 100-megaton bombs, we have bombs more powerful than 100 megatons. We placed Gagarin and Titov in space, and we can replace them with other loads that can be directed to any place on Earth

and it wasn' just sputnik but also vostok 1 on april 12th 1961 with gagarin on board that "seemed to galvanize the american public".

reading about darpa everyone just quotes sputnik.