Happy 50th birthday, Sputnik!
It’s hard to imagine for someone like me who grew up in the space age that there was a time when we didn’t have regularly scheduled space shuttle flights, 24-four hour a day satellite television or the ability to place a phone call from New York to China as easily as one from Newcastle to Chatham.
But all that started to change on October 4, 1957, 50 years ago last week.
On that fateful day, the Russians (we still called them Soviets back then) launched Sputnik I, the world's first artificial satellite. No bigger than a breadbox and weighing less than 200 pounds, Sputnik changed the world. Almost everything we know today from the space shuttle to CNN to cell phones to the current political climate of the planet can be traced back to the launch of Sputnik.
The political climate of the planet at the time was less than friendly, to put it mildly.
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics - (them) - and the so-called Free World - (us) - were involved in a cold war and the climate was particularly chilly, what with all the nuclear missiles aimed at each other.
Plans had been in the works for a few years to launch an artificial satellite for 1957 because scientists around the world knew activity on the surface of the Sun would be particularly high then and they wanted a closer look, the Web site http://history.nasa.gov/sputnik/ said. In 1955 the White House announced to the world their plan to take the lead in the endeavour by launching a satellite for that year.
So it comes as no surprise that the very hush-hush-until-after-the-fact launch of Sputnik caught the Yanks by surprise, to say the very least.
The launch of Sputnik marked the beginning of the space age, the space race between the United States and the USSR and the end of the way things used to be.
The world would never be the same.
Less than a year later in July of 1958, The United States Congress passed the National Aeronautic and Space Act which directly led to the creation of National Aeronautics and Space Administration, what average Joes on the street call NASA, you know, the fellas who launch the rockets and space shuttles and whatnot.
Less than 12 years later, a human being stood on another world, our Moon, and looked back at our Earth, shimmering like a blue jewel in the inky blackness of space, for the very first time.
All because of the launch of Sputnik.
Thankfully, the world’s politics have changed a lot since then. Last Wednesday, the Russian and U.S. space agencies signed agreements in Moscow under which Russia will provide technology for U.S. missions to scan the surface of the Moon and Mars.
We sure have come a long way from the day Sputnik was launched. But imagine what we could have done as a planet if the Russians and the Americans had been working together from the launch of Sputnik onward, how far we could have progressed in the last 50 years, if they hadn’t spent most of it with missiles aimed at each other.
Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?
Happy 50th Sputnik.
But all that started to change on October 4, 1957, 50 years ago last week.
On that fateful day, the Russians (we still called them Soviets back then) launched Sputnik I, the world's first artificial satellite. No bigger than a breadbox and weighing less than 200 pounds, Sputnik changed the world. Almost everything we know today from the space shuttle to CNN to cell phones to the current political climate of the planet can be traced back to the launch of Sputnik.
The political climate of the planet at the time was less than friendly, to put it mildly.
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics - (them) - and the so-called Free World - (us) - were involved in a cold war and the climate was particularly chilly, what with all the nuclear missiles aimed at each other.
Plans had been in the works for a few years to launch an artificial satellite for 1957 because scientists around the world knew activity on the surface of the Sun would be particularly high then and they wanted a closer look, the Web site http://history.nasa.gov/sputnik/ said. In 1955 the White House announced to the world their plan to take the lead in the endeavour by launching a satellite for that year.
So it comes as no surprise that the very hush-hush-until-after-the-fact launch of Sputnik caught the Yanks by surprise, to say the very least.
The launch of Sputnik marked the beginning of the space age, the space race between the United States and the USSR and the end of the way things used to be.
The world would never be the same.
Less than a year later in July of 1958, The United States Congress passed the National Aeronautic and Space Act which directly led to the creation of National Aeronautics and Space Administration, what average Joes on the street call NASA, you know, the fellas who launch the rockets and space shuttles and whatnot.
Less than 12 years later, a human being stood on another world, our Moon, and looked back at our Earth, shimmering like a blue jewel in the inky blackness of space, for the very first time.
All because of the launch of Sputnik.
Thankfully, the world’s politics have changed a lot since then. Last Wednesday, the Russian and U.S. space agencies signed agreements in Moscow under which Russia will provide technology for U.S. missions to scan the surface of the Moon and Mars.
We sure have come a long way from the day Sputnik was launched. But imagine what we could have done as a planet if the Russians and the Americans had been working together from the launch of Sputnik onward, how far we could have progressed in the last 50 years, if they hadn’t spent most of it with missiles aimed at each other.
Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?
Happy 50th Sputnik.
posted by Street Wise Guy | 7:19 AM
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