Wow!

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It's both weird and sad when a major anniversary passes you don't even realize it until it has passed.

This past Thursday, October 4th, was the 50th anniversary of the Sputnik I launch. It was one of those moments when history itself was changed forever.

Americans, and the rest of the world, woke up, realizing that the Soviet Union had a huge technological advantage over everyone else. The United States launched its own space program with an unprecedented fervor. Shortly after that, President John F. Kennedy challenged the nation to send a man to the moon and return him safely home.

It's just sad that an anniversary like this didn't get more attention in the news media. I did a quick Google search and only found one published news article from any of the major media outlets that talked about it. (Kudos, by the way, to everyone at USA Today for not dropping the ball.)

Oh, and I realize that this makes me a total geek, but I got a huge thrill out of listening to a recording of Sputnik's telemetry broadcast on NASA's web site.

Comments

Liza said…
It's true that if you only search for "sputnik," the returns are kinda sad. But if you include the name of a specific newspaper or magazine, you'll find a happer result. "sputnik newspaper" works well too.

I knew there had to be more coverage on it, since i had read an essay in Time, so US News wasn't the only one: "Space Brains"

And it looks like The Detroit News and Freep ran differently titled copies of the Associated Press article on October 4: "Sputnik launched birth of Space Age" and "Sputnik changed the world"

Glad you blogged about it, though! I think Kluger has an excellent and highly relevant point about today's reactions to national pissing matches when he says, "There was no reason to make the bad guys badder; instead, we ought to make ourselves smarter." I don't see us placing the same emphasis on being smarter now, despite No Child Left Behind Because We Now Give Out More Bs.

^_^
1:43 AM, October 08, 2007
Liza said…
Urgh - I meant "happier" in the first paragraph.

I don't get it - Flickr lets you edit comments, why can't Blogger?

^_^
1:43 AM, October 08, 2007
Frank Nemecek said…
Thanks for the update. As for editing of comments, I've grimaced over some of my own typos as well.

Flickr is owned by Yahoo!, whereas Blogger is a Google operation. Hopefully, the Google people will eventually take the lead from one of the things that their counterparts got right.

Love & laughter,
Frank
11:22 AM, October 08, 2007
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