Sputnik at 50 !

Sputnik's shape is actually quite well chosen - it's very photogenic!

And an event in Scotland

And another major event in the U.K.:
The Lovell radio Telescope at Jodrell Bank became operational in October 1957 and its very first use was to track the carrier rocket that launched Sputnik 1, the world's first artificial satellite.
The first weekend of October 2007, Jodrell Bank Observatory will present a unique spectacle as the iconic Lovell radio Telescope briefly becomes the largest cinema projection screen in the world!
See www.manchester.ac.uk/jodrellbank. Find out more about other events to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the dawn of the Space Age at www.space50.org.uk.

IMHO an excellent article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/25/science/...;pagewanted=all

And we take (communications/media especially) satellites so for granted today.

Whenever I think of Sputnik, I think of Laura Ingalls Wilder: A pioneer girl born in 1867 who lived to see Sputnik. She went from covered wagons and telegraphs to an artificial satellite.

All..

October 4th is almost here. fifty years was the beep that startled the world... and launched the Space Age.

Go to http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/09/28/...in3309433.shtml and scroll down to the
"1957 The Space Age Begins" video.... well worth watching for the vintage graphics and the reactions...

I vaguely remember the "back yard" and my standing there with my father on a cold night in october 1957. I was four years old. Sadly I cannot query my father about this for he passed away in 1959.

That beep sounds deep and true even today.

May the 100th find humanity on the Moon and beyond.

Craig

...and may the 1000th find us on the planets of nearby stars.

It's a somber 50th anniversary for me; I'm angry at all that was left undone, neglected, that we all expected. Maybe it's just impatience, though. The important thing is never to turn back, to keep going, to explore and learn, no matter the pace.

With apologies to Stu, here's my rendering:

Fellow Traveler

Four billion years of gravity, overcome
new moon rising
over the new world, and the old
the time has come

It soars, ever falling
over the ancient continents, the eternal oceans of the blue world, warm cradle
of air and water
a made thing, no meteoroid,
beeping
the first emissary of the plains apes of Africa announces to the Universe:
we are here
and we will stay

More will follow
by the dozens
then the hundreds
finallly the millions
but you were the first,
and your name will live forever

True -- though I am ancient enough to remember the very first telecasts relayed by comsats. The first one, which I do recall, was bounced off of Echo. I remember several, including some of the coverage of the 1964 Tokyo Summer Olympics (if I'm remembering correctly) which had the video subtitle "LIVE via Early Bird"...

We take them for granted now, but I recall a day when live telecasts from remote portions of the world were a Space-Age Wonder. (Then again, I can recall that the very first "live" coverage of a manned spaceflight splashdown was on Gemini V, and consisted not of video but of telephoto still images relayed in near real-time.)

-the other Doug

I have very mixed emotions about this anniversary, and I suspect others do to. Whilst I'm proud of all that's been achieved, and marvel daily at the wonders we've seen, I can't help feeling - well, cheated and betrayed, too. When I was a kid I naively fell for the "When you grow up you'll... " lines, as I devoured anything to do with space, and firmly believed that by the time I was this age I'd be bouncing across the Moon, or Mars, looking up at Earth, in the company of many, many others, as Mankind spread across space. The closest thing I have to that now is sitting quietly with a Stephen Baxter book, sipping a glass of wine and reading about "The Third Expansion" of Mankind across the galaxy, pushing the Silver Ghosts and Xeelee out of the way, and then I look at my bookcase, at all the books full of pictures of gleaming silver and white domes on the Moon, and snowman-white figures bunny-hopping across the martian deserts in search of life with captions saying "By 1990 there will be a scientific outpost on Mars" and I want to scream at the sky, quite honestly.

And so...


FUTURE LOATHING

I hate children. Not for
the normal reasons – noise,
mugging old ladies and “boisterously”
beating up nuns, but because
they’re young and when older they’ll boldly go
and see all the things I dreamed of seeing
when I sat in school, head in a book,
being promised, faithfully,
that I’d live on the Moon just as soon
as I was old enough to vote.
It was there, written in black and white:
holidays in space would be all the rage;
I’d walk on Mars’ dusty plains,
silently gazing up at Earth shining like
a Christmas tree bauble above Olympus Mons.
Instead I clickaclick my mouse, morosely
pouring over yet more unmanned rover
images of Mars’ barren lands,
trying to understand why Tomorrow’s
World lied to my face, why I’m still here
on Terra, peering up from the bottom
of its gravity well like a prisoner
in a dungeon as Mankind slumbers,
languishing in self-imposed exile
on Earth while the myriad worlds
of Sol’s System sing like sirens,
calling, beckoning, begging
to be enjoyed and explored and adored
in person, not through the unblinking
etched silicon eyes of “plucky” robots
the size of a golf cart.

That’s why, hearing a baby cry,
watching it grow I feel no ga-ga compassion.
I can’t sigh “Aaah” as it yawns
in its crib. Instead I glare at it
with tight, envious eyes, begrudging it
every year of the future that it will see
but will be stolen by Death from me.
“God, you’ll see that base on the Moon”,
I growl in my mind as I watch them
prowling round town in their chav
track suits and caps, talking crap, “not me;
you’ll be there on the day the first person says
“We come to Mars for all Mankind,
To seek and find Life…” Is that fair?
I see them sitting there on the steps of the bank,
sallow-faced, can-draining, shell-suited
hoodie hyenas laughing and sticking a finger
up at a future they don’t deserve to see,
surly street monkeys gibbering away,
night and day, night and day and I want
to scream at the sky “Why?!” Why them
and not me? Why should they see the wonders?
Why did everyone lie to me? Make me believe
that if I worked hard and followed the rules
I’d live in a world of wonder? How cruel
is that? Is this the Cosmos’ idea of a joke?

Looking at those old books now,
tt their lie-lined pages,
corners folded over, creased and faded
I feel rage and, yes, betrayed.
I’ve no hotel room on the Moon;
there’s no Armstrong Museum to roam
around, looking for That Footprint
on the dust-covered ground;
no bubble-domed greenhouse
stands on the ruddy surface of Mars;
no sleek starships slip between the far-
scattered suns; skiers have yet
to cut criss-cross tracks across
Europa’s cracked and cratered ice
because they lied to me.

Over and over.

Over and over again.

© Stuart Atkinson 2007


-------------------------------------------------------

Bit darker than your excellent poem nprev, sorry...

That, Stuart, is a masterful expression of... well, of my own mind. For one.

If I don't say I appreciate your gifts often enough, I apologize...

-the other Doug

Not at all, Stu, and thank you...your poem captures my feelings as well.

This is a bitter anniversary for all of us who were children that dreamed of space, who believed in a Werner Von Braun/Willy Ley/Chesley Bonestell future. And, yes, I envy the hell out of the young today who just might live to see it all start...but it may well be their children who make it happen.

It had better start, though, and within the next two or three generations...otherwise I fear that no nation or organization will be able to begin the Great Diaspora for lack of resources...

BTW, interesting to see that the lead story on CBS' Sunday Morning news magazine is the Sputnik 1 anniversary...maybe this week will mark some more widespread reflection.

EDIT: Just watched the story...crap. Retrospective on the US education system impact, little bit of we "won" the space race...missed the point entirely.

We don't win a damn thing until we're a multi-planet, in fact multi-solar system species. Long-term survival (in geological time) is the only standard for success in the Universe...

Here's a music clip about Sputnik that I made from the song "Surprise!" and some vintage footages of the early Space Age.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-mZ9pKvCmk

Just a few more days and it's the 50th anniversary of this first satellite. Time flies fast but nobody can forget Sputnik.

Surprise!
by Leslie Fish

Remember the fifties, those fat complacent days
When the future seemed a century away?
Then up went Sputnik, gave the world a butt-kick,
And made it clear tomorrow starts today.

Beep beep beep beep...Hello there!
Sputnik sails giggling through the skies.
Red flags, red faces, jump into the race
As the space age begins with a surprise. (well duh!)

You generals once thought Von Braun a waste of cash,
And Goddard needed treatment really bad.
Then that global shot put gave you the hotfoot
And -- beep beep -- you're blasted off the pad.

Done for a threat, propaganda or prestige --
The point is, the thing was in the sky.
It made the generals frown and put their money down,
And meet that bet or know the reason why.

That's how it started, all those years ago,
The push that got us climbing into space.
Cynic beginnings, greed for big winnings.
But look at all we've gotten from that race!

Sputnik wore out, and spiraled back to Earth;
On re-entry it burned up very soon.
Hail and goodbye to that goose in the sky --
And in twelve more years a man walked on the Moon!

Stu and nprev...

I also feel betrayed. All those dreams of a future that was going to be so different. Instead, we are still stuck to Terra.

But my children and grandchildren are no more assured that future amongst the stars anymore than we were. We know more now, but that does not make an expansion to the stars a sure thing.

Unless humankind gets a lot wiser faster, I fear a Malthusian future awaits my grandkids. And instead of placing their footprints in the red sands of Mars, they may just be tracking thru the barren terrestrial sands of a global dust bowl.

So much is JUST within our grasp.... a brighter future, with unending horizons.... unending surprises.... HOPE.

I sincerely hope the 1000th aniversary sees us toasting our narrow escape into the wide open spaces above.

For now I will honor that "beep, beep, beep, beep" that, as one commentator put it, announced the divide in history between the old world paradigm and the space age.

Craig

Bolshoi surprise indeed, Thu; thank you, that was extremely cool!!!

BP, I share your concerns. Although the latest projections don't say Malthusian disaster this century, we all know damn good & well that something happens, eventually; hell, the geological record clearly indicates that catastrophic events are the very engine of evolution, and the fact that we are a voilitional, contentious species vastly increases the likelihood of such events.

High time to hitch the wagons; high time to go out into space, seek fresh vistas, see things that have never been seen...time to secure our future, before time runs out...

No need to worry -- we all know that the world will only end just as soon as quantum reality coalesces around the event of the Chicago Cubs winning the World Series. No less than a picosecond before that event occurs, this world, aye, perhaps even this entire universe, will meet its end.

But since this is the Cubs we're talking about, I don't imagine we have anything to fear anytime soon... wait, what's that, you say? The Cubs just won their division and are in the playoffs?

Uh-oh...

-the other Doug

pointers ---> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXteSV8rBwY

For those that don't know it. Leslie Fish's "Hope Eyrie" (sung here by Julie Ecklar)

I can't listen to it without crying. Hard.

I've written a piece about this which I hope will get accepted for this week's "Carnival of Space". Far too long to put in a post here, so if anyone's interested please feel free to take a look...

Space Age: RIP

Very sad words stu, although well crafted as ever! I hope that before anyone here gets much older things will begin to change. EDIT: I was born in the early 1980's so perhaps I dont feel as betrayed as some here might. I remember school teachers telling me how all space travel would be over by 2000 because there was nothing out there worth the effort. And I see today how nothing much has changed out there, and how many hold the same point of view as my teacher, and how we are still dreaming of space and still striving to make the dream happen.
Part of me is surprised that my teacher was wrong, the rest of me is just very glad that he was!

Excellent, Stu. Thanks for giving such a strong voice to these feelings we all share.

Ed, thanks also for posting that video link...had tears in my eyes as well.

<rant mode> God, oh God, why can't people see the nobility and vast importance of this??????? Is it really that we're not wise enough to at least act in our own long-term self interest?

Marsbug, I hope your teacher lives to eat his words, sans condiments.</rant mode>

RETREAT

Half a century since Sputnik bleeped,
leaping from the frozen steppes, creeping
up on a sleeping world to whirl
around a startled Earth; no surfing
of websites then, just frightened men
and women scanning the sky with wide
and “Can it be true?” eyes
for The Sputnik’s fleeting spark
cutting through the dark, a grain
of shining diamond dust – the first
ever seen – gleaming and rushing through
the night, a wondrous sight to celebrate
or terrify, depending on the country
you called Home…

Half a hundred times since then
our watery world has whirled around
the Sun and all the dreams
that Sputnik’s fleeting flight inspired
seem to have blown away. True, shuttles fly,
a space station skates across the sky,
but we are exiled on the Earth.
The blue and green world of Man’s birth
remains his only home, though once
we roamed the Moon’s ancient, ashen plains,
played golf on that alien land, planted
flags of bright red white and blue
and our footprints in its grey dust too –

But no-one walks on Luna now;
no lights shine in our satellite’s dark seas,
instead it mocks and teases us
as it moves across the sky,
wondering why we ran away and didn’t
stay to lay foundations for a second
home for Man. I cannot understand;
it makes no sense to stand in such
a glorious, golden place
only to turn your face away
from the Future’s blinding light.

I am ashamed of our Dunkirk retreat
from the solar system’s nearest beach;
afraid that in a thousand years
historians and scholars will sneer at us
and, hearing Armstrong speak
those famous New World words
will think our age absurd, and curse
our generation for its timid toe-dip
in the surf of the ocean of the night.

© Stuart Atkinson 2007

Nice little article on the BBC website on this which also has a link to some footage of the launch (some in colour that I don't remember seeing before).

Article: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7027199.stm

Launch footage: http://news.bbc.co.uk/player/nol/newsid_70...sb=1&news=1

Cheers

Brian

Dear Stu...Although that is a great poem I don't agree with the negative portraits I've been reading lately...
My perspective is slightly different, you know I'm an optimist by nature and to me the path is always onwards and upwards...or full speed down an abyss... ;-)

EDITED: Oops! Forgot it...HAPPY BIRTHDAY Спутник!!!

Sorry ustrax, don't mean to sound exclusively negative. I celebrate the wonders we've achieved, obviously, I'm just saddened that we fled the Moon prematurely and left the exploration of the solar system to spaceprobes instead of living, breathing human beings. As wonderful as the images returned by Cassini, Voyager and all the other aluminium ambassadors despatched from Earth are and have been, I'd much rather wide-with-wonder human eyes had seen those magnificent landscapes through space helmet visors, you know?

And, truth be told, I'm just mad at Maggie Philbin for lying to me when I was a kid and telling me on Tomorrow's World there'd be people exploring Mars when I grew up. You let me down Maggie, oh you let me down so badly...

Great words USTRAX, you put how I feel in much better words than i could ever manage.

I'm in awe about the achievements of the last 50 years from a small nitrogen filled sphere to the sophisticated probes scattered throughout the solar system and a permanent manned presence in orbit.

Apollo was way ahead of it's time, IMO. I guess, as I wasn't around back then it didn't give me an impression of what to expect and the disappointment when it turned out to be false.

If we can make as much progress over the next 50 years as the last, I'll be a happy 80 year old.

Onwards...

It's easily done, Stu. Your poem on the subject could be construed as a 'promise' by today's babies when they're old enough to read it. All human enterprise is a fragile, precarious affair. For the present state of things I think we just have to count our (considerable) blessings. As to the future: imagination and hope are indispensable, expectation unwise.

I saw her getting off a train, which I then got on, here in Leicester yesterday afternoon. I'm sure she said there was going to be the dice sized holographic cube to put music on...and that would have been the early '90s.

WHERE'S MY CUBE!

(and my flying car)

Doug

Well at least your train turned up! And I suppose the phones and typewriters have got a bit cleverer over the decades . .

As cute as Maggie Philbin was - and still is, having seen her this morning on the TV, in a Sputnik 50th anniversary piece filmed at the British National Space Centre in Leicester... probably where she was heading when you saw her Doug - I realised years ago that she and the rest of the TOMORROW'S WORLD team wouldn't know the truth if it fell on them wearing a big hat with "I AM THE TRUTH" written on it... they promised me that these new-fangled "CDs" were so strong you could eat your lunch off them, they couldn't be scratched, and they would "last forever" (hahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!), that by 2000 we'd all be working in "paper-free offices", and that there'd be a manned Moon base by the time 2001 rolled around for real.

Pants on fire, definitely...

UMSF logo......changed...and it's staying like this till Jan 4th - the day Sputnik 1 re-entered
http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?showtopic=4667

Another WOW to the new logo & theme! Happy 50th anniversary, Sputnik
I wonder what it would be in the next 50 years. According to an article, we may be celebrating the 20th Mars landing anniversary by then and I'm longing for this moment

Btw, if anybody has an interest on my music clips, you can download the high-resolution version here http://www.prometheus-music.com/eb/. Enjoy watching!

As year LI of the Space Age dawns, I'm wondering what will be accomplished in year 101 (which I guess I stand at least a 50% chance of living to see).

Consider some milestones of the first 50 years:

Year II: First probe to touch another celestial body (the Moon)
Year IV: First interplanetary probe
Year V: First successful transmission from the vicinity of another planet
Year IX: First soft landing on the Moon; first impact on another planet (Venus)
Year XII: First manned landing on the Moon
Year XIV: First soft landing on Venus
Year XIX: First soft landing on Mars
Year XVII: First flyby of Jupiter
Year XXIII: First flyby of Saturn
Year XXIX: FIrst flyby of Uranus
Year XXXII: First flyby of Neptune
Year XLVIII: First landing on Titan

With so much accomplished (particularly in the first twenty years), imagine what -- with sufficient decisiveness, energy, and persistence -- could be done in the next 50 years?

Some notabel missing dates
IX - First lunar orbiter (Luna 10)
XIV - First planetary orbiter
XXII - First flyby of a comet (ICE)
XXXIV - First flyby of an asteroid (Gaspra)
XLIV - First small body orbiter (NEAR)
XLV - First asteroid impact/landing (NEAR)
XLIX - First comet sample return (coma at least - Stardust)


Some notable missing dates. Also, on the chance Hayabusa has a sample, there may be an asteroid sample return in progress at the end of the first 50 years.

I liked your poem very much, Stu. I'm an optimist too, but it's important beyond words to realize that humans only change anything if they are first dissatisfied...therefore, fomenting dissatisfaction with our progress in space to date can only work to make things better...

EDIT: A brief moment of outrage. Just watched the CBS Evening News (for non-US people, this is one of the three major network newscasts), and not a mention of the Sputnik anniversary. Instead, the next-to-the-last story mentioned that tonight was the 50th anniversary of the premiere of a popular sitcom, "Leave It To Beaver", then cut to a story about cleaning up some Florida rivers.

I perceive this as an intentional swipe at space exploration by the producers and/or the anchor, Katie Couric. CBS was the network of Walter Cronkite, who was not only the most respected and trusted newsman in history ever over here but also a strong supporter of the space program.

So, do we need dissatisfaction as expressed by Stu's poem? You bet your ass we do, and a hell of a lot more of it if we ever expect to reach Mars, much less the stars. (We really need a primal scream emoticon to express this properly...)

"Mankind is more disposed to suffer what evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they have become accustomed."

-the other Doug

BBc Radio 4's 'World Tonight' programme at 10 pm yesterday had a long and rather good item about the future of spaceflight. Highly recommended for anyone with 'listen again' facility. (Just before that from 9:30 - 10 Melvyn Bragg and guests were discussing antimatter.)

Sputnik has landed in Rome at the Coliseum.


Paolo Amoroso

CBS radio news had Sputnik as the 3rd story that day, complete with playback of the "beep - beep - beep", and interviews with someone about their recollections of the time and the signficance to early US space efforts.

50 years in space and just now they came up with this:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7029564.stm

Quasi Universal Intergalactic Denomination

Yeah, I heard that too on KNX1070 here in LA...that's why I'm so outraged by the snub on the Evening News.

If you recall, Katie Couric in her CBS Radio "Notebook" several months back did an editorial that was deeply critical of space exploration in general (one paraphrased quote: 'All this money can be better spent elsewhere'). I suspect that she's one of those poorly informed people that think NASA's budget is larger than that of the DoD...

That does it. No Christmas card for Katie this year.


Phil: Cool story! I don't have the heart to point out to them that boosting those things would cost far more than they're worth. Still, would want to carry a few if my debit card got zorched enroute...

What is the exchange rate with quatloos and gold-pressed latinum?

Katie is no Walter. Unfortunately.

There *are* no Walter Cronkites or even (shudder) Jules Bergmans out there today. There are no mainstream media commentators who champion space exploration, or who even seem to "get it" at even the most fundamental levels.

All we have are Miles O'Brien on CNN (who gets excited about these things, but who will abandon that excitement if it means getting a promotion to something beyond "science correspondent") and occasionally Keith Olbermann. Beyond that, space is treated in the media as an "amusing little story" at best and "a horrible waste of money" at the worst.

The only media outlet championing space exploration right now is the Discovery Channel and its myriad associated networks. While they mostly do a good job, their contributions are few and far between -- we get new programming, on average, of once a *year* (during "space week") and then spend the rest of the year (i.e., the *other* 51 weeks) watching the same repeats over and over. Or watching absolutely *no* programming about space exploration. At all.

Even NASA TV gets to where it re-runs the same films over and over. Yes, you get some fine little bits and pieces from them, including press conferences and such, but in terms of historical films, there are at least 50 hours worth of films covering early space achievements -- and we get to see about four hours' worth of them, repeated over and over and over.

Forget a balloon flight -- we here need to be setting up our own cable network!!!

-the other Doug

Or at least our own weekly show on Discovery: The Planetary Society presents This Week in Unmanned Spaceflight, with your host, Doug Ellison...