For anyone under 60 or so, the idea that an artificial satellite scared the Bejesus out of everyone in America seems downright silly. But it wasn’t all that silly then and it did help to make the world we live in today. The Sputnik Anniversary is a good time to stop and think.
The Fort Worth Museum of Science and History had a touring show come to town called Soviet Space, in which they talked about Sputnik, The First Man in Space and the many other Firsts that the Soviets managed to do during the 1950s and 1960s. But the most amazing part of the exhibit was not all the stories of Soviet heroism, it was the life-sized replica of Sputnik. Sputnik was about the size of a bowling ball, maybe a basketball. This thing was small. It’s impact was not.
“We Were First,” trumpeted a headline in the popular Izvestia daily. “At 22:28 Moscow time on October 4, 1957, humanity entered a new space age. The Soviet Union sent the Earth’s first artificial satellite into orbit.“
I was not around at the time Sputnik launched us into a race with Soviet Russia to get to the Moon, but I did feel the Cold War. I was among those lucky students that got to practice Duck and Cover Drills-in the rather silly idea that putting your hands over your head would protect you from a nuclear attack. I still see the black and yellow Fallout Shelter signs as I travel around the country, most of them covered with rust and all but forgotten.
A few years ago British Airways had a costume contest called Ride The Rocket-they were giving away Two Round Trip Tickets to London. The Wife and I entered the contest and won a couple of trips to London. Woo-Whoo! But the Judges for this contest were a group of morons from a Country and Western Radio station that were clueless about space, history, and well, it seemed-everything. There was a man there with his small son, they were wrapped in aluminum foil and each had a couple of sliver colored sticks they were waving around. The man was Sput and his son was Nik. Sputnik, get it? Cute and clever, as the theme of the British Airways Contest was Ride The Rocket and had to do with space travelers. The Judges didn’t know what Sputnik was. They didn’t get the joke of the man and his son being Sput and Nik. They still won a pair of tickets, as I recall, it just still amazes me to think that there are people that never heard of Sputnik.
The real tragedy of the story is that no one gives a damn about space any more. The United States still sends up Space Shuttles, but these are nothing more than Long Haul Truckers to Low Orbit. The work they are doing seems pretty pointless and launching satellites can be done just as easily with good, old-fashioned rockets. There was a plan to send a man to Mars, there are no plans now to send anyone much of anywhere. Maybe if Hilton Built a Space Station there would be a bit more interest in the whole space thing.
In response to the Sputnik Anniversary, Russia is planning to send a probe to a moon of Mars and is planning a manned Moon mission by 2025. No need to be in a hurry, the moon will still be there. And it’s not like there is a race to get there or anything.
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