The space age began 50 years ago last week. On Oct. 4, 1957, the Soviet Union put the first Sputnik into orbit. It was one of the best things that ever happened to the United States, although you wouldn’t have known it at the time.
Not that I recall it all that well. I was just starting second grade, but I do remember the big headlines and how worried most adults were. America was supposed to be the technological leader of the world, and yet the Soviets had been first with a major accomplishment. Would they spy on us? Shoot bombs down from space? Convince other nations that the Communist way was superior in the same way that the Soviet technology seemed to be better?
One immediate effect that I enjoyed was that kids like me who did well on tests were immediately seen as a national asset to be cherished and developed. Federal assistance for going to college became a “national defense” program. Schools quickly improved their science and math programs, even the elementary school in Evans, Colo.
The “space race” took form as America tried to meet the Soviet challenge. They had big rockets that could launch heavy payloads. Sputnik 2, launched on Nov. 3, 1957, weighed 1,120 pounds and carried the dog Laika into space.
By contrast, our first satellite weighed less than four pounds, and the first two attempted launches were disastrous failures.
But what nobody seemed to realize at the time was that America didn’t need big booster rockets for big satellites, because our electronics technology was better. We could build tiny, lightweight devices to gather and transmit data from space. Back then, they couldn’t.
The spending on space also jump-started the development of faster and smaller computers and related electronics.
Millions of us use the results of that research every day, in everything from TV remotes to microwave ovens. We communicate with each other thanks to another result of Sputnik. In response to the Soviet satellite, President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1958 created the Advanced Research Projects Agency in the Pentagon. ARPA’s researchers were scattered throughout the country, and to enable them to communicate better, they developed ARPANET – the ancestor of today’s Internet with its packet protocols and redundant routes.
The list of ARPA developments, especially as pertains to computers, is much longer, but perhaps of interest only to geeks. As for the space race in general, I have read that the amount of money saved, on account of improved weather forecasting enabled by orbiting satellites, is considerably more than the total amount spent on space exploration by all nations. I don’t know how true that is, but I do know that the satellite dish on my roof saves money from what the cable company would charge – and in 1957, who could have imagined a day when those dishes would sprout in American neighborhoods?
The response to Sputnik, a technological challenge, was to show that we could do better in that regard. And some days I despair that our response to 9/11, an attack by religious extremists who abhor modern science, was to show that we, too, can do better at practicing religious extremism, ignoring science and dispensing violence.
It’s enough to make one wish for another Sputnik, a scientific and technological shock that would inspire our country to jump ahead. Maybe the Chinese will announce a cheap, efficient solar cell. Perhaps India will develop a microbe that converts corn stalks into octane. The French could announce their stem-cell research has resulted in a cure for Alzheimer’s disease.
We’d construe those developments as mortal threats, and see catching up and moving ahead as a matter of national security, just as President Eisenhower did 50 years ago.
Ed Quillen (ed@cozine.com) is a freelance writer, history buff and publisher of Colorado Central Magazine in Salida.
