The world changed 50 years ago on October 4 1957 when the US public heard the shocking news that the Soviet Union had successfully launched the first satellite Sputnik I. Why didn't the US beat the Soviets in this first crucial round of the space race? The documentary reveals an astonishing behind the scenes story of the politics and personalities that collided over the earliest efforts to get America into space, long before the found of NASA. Anticommunist witch hunts drove some of the nation's most talented rocketry poineers out of the country even as it welcomed Wernher von Braun and his former Nazi colleagures. With help from Walt Disney, von Braun's vision of future space travel swiftly captivated American TV watchers. However, as he became the first media star of the Space Age, von Braun's attempts to build space probes were hobbled by inter-service rivalries. Sputnik Declassified details the previously untold story of the technological and political missteps that made the US lose out to the Soviets beeping electronic basketball.