Fifty years ago this month, the Soviet Union launched the world's first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1, an event that transformed American higher education. Americans felt threatened by the "red moon" overhead and communist know-how, and Congress supported a flurry of federal spending that helped to greatly expand the number of American research universities and scientists. Today the country sees a new challenge: that other countries might outpace America economically through the production of technology-based goods. China in particular has rapidly increased its research spending and the number of students earning science degrees. "Fifty years after Sputnik, the United States is in another equally important race that will define our leadership," said Senator Michael B. Enzi, a Wyoming Republican, in a speech this year. During the past two years, academic and business leaders have called for the federal government to respond by increasing science spending on a scale comparable to what it did after Sputnik. The federal government has now answered, enacting a law, the America Competes Act, in August. Academic leaders and Congressional sponsors have called it a good start, but the measure is a significantly smaller effort, in scale and scope, than the surge of money that followed in Sputnik's wake.