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Quote of the Day: The Space Age Begins
Today is the 63rd anniversary of the launch of Sputnik 1.
“From the vantage point of 2000 A.D., the year 1957 will most certainly stand in history as the year of man’s progression from a two-dimensional to a three-dimensional geography. It may well stand also, as the point in time at which intellectual achievement forged ahead of weapons and national wealth as instruments of national policy.” – Lloyd Berkner
The key which launched Sputnik next to my dad’s Vanguard TV-3 at the National Air and Space Museum.
Thanks, Richard.
This is the Quote of the Day. We have plenty of openings this month if you would like to share a quotation to educate, honor another, or just so you can rant. Our sign-up sheet is here. Tomorrow is available, for instance.
Or, if you’re looking to write something a bit more creative, you might try our Group Writing Project this month: It was a dark and stormy night…
The Russian rocket developer Boris Chertok, in his excellent memoir, provides an interesting perspective on Sputnik. Apparently, the Soviets had their R-7 ballistic missile working fairly well, but were having problems with the reentry of the nosecone..which tended to burn up, which made the missile unusable for military purposes.
For an earth satellite, though, reentry didn’t matter…
I reviewed Chertok’s memoir, Rockets and People, here last year. It’s really an outstanding piece of work, although very long..as I noted in the review, it partly, it reads like a high school annual or inside company history edited by someone who wants to be sure no one feels left out and that all the events and tragedies and inside jokes are appropriately recorded. Partly, it is a technological history of rocket development, and partly, it is a study in the practicalities of managing large programs in environments of technical uncertainty and extreme time pressure. Highly recommended for anyone interested in missile and space, the history of the Soviet Union, human behavior under pressure, and/or the management of large programs.
Here’s the review.
I heard Walter Sullivan (NYT’s Science Editor) tell this story (He got snowed in touring the drilling project in Greenland, and we shared a room for few days). Here is Time Magazine’s version:
Edit: Years later, Sullivan was still tickled that he broke the story to the Soviets at the Embassy—they had no idea before he told Berkner.
This is an important human milestone. It is eternally annoying that the darned Commies were first in space.
In August 1957, my family moved from the south Bronx to a nearby suburb, just over the bridge in a quiet backwater section of Queens. I was five. We had a backyard now, which for me might as well have been an estate. And not long after we moved in, everyone was standing out on the lawn, staring up at the night time sky and talking about space. October 4, and for days and weeks afterwards when the newspapers gave the daily transit times.
When people in subsequent years talked about the sledgehammer effect this had on American education, particularly what we’d now call STEM subjects, I’m here to tell you this is no exaggeration.
Vanguardians in 2008 talked about Sputnik, Vanguard TV-3 and Vanguard 1. https://youtu.be/HS72o86aeZo
I was a freshman engineering student in college. I remember arguments about it and its size and weight. As I recall, there was a rivalry between the Vanguard folks and the Redstone team.