Sputnik
So, you're twenty-something. Ok, you're young, cool and sexy.
But you've really missed out on something and it's something you're never going to experience.
It's fifty years today since the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the first man-made satellite to be sent up into space. It wasn't very big - about the size of a basketball. It orbited the Earth in ninety-eight minutes. It went round a few times, beeping so they knew where it was, and then burned up.
But it was the start of the Space Age - and now even that term, once so new and exciting, sounds old-fashioned.
By November the Soviet Union had sent up the next Sputnik, with a dog named Laika inside it.
The Americans weren't happy. If the Soviet Union were sending things up into space, then they could in future be used to carry nuclear weapons. They didn't like the idea of the Ruskies being ahead of them in the game, either.
So they quickly assembled all the latest technology - string, toilet-roll middles, the computing power of one of today's digital watches - and started working rather fast.
Twelve years later they had a man walking on the moon. It was a small step for the man, but a giant leap for Mankind.
And the Apollo missions were exciting beyond belief. They happened in black and white, of course - everything did in those days, certainly in our house, well into the Seventies. The breathtaking countdowns when we were waiting for the rocket launch. Ten - nine - eight - seven - six - whenever I see old film of it now it still gives me the same frissson of excitement.
"And now, over to Mission Control, Houston" - - and grainy shots of men sitting at banks of monitors. And then the astronauts talking from the spacecraft. Yes, from the SPACECRAFT! In SPACE! And all accompanied by the sssshing noise of what sounded like a Space Mission Cappuccino Machine.
They were going to LAND A MAN ON THE MOON! Incredible! And that feeling of excitement, anticipation and fear, all the time they were up there. With Apollo 13, when it all went wrong and the astronauts nearly died and it was touch and go whether they would manage to bring them back to Earth, it seemed to me as though the whole of Planet Earth was waiting and worrying. I knew even then that this wasn't so, but that was how it felt.
The Apollo launches seemed to happen very often - and, in fact, they did, of course - so there was always another one to look forward to.
And Sputnik started it all. History is what you can remember, of course, and NASA's account of it may differ slightly from mine. But what I remember is the feeling. The heady excitement of it all.
I'm sorry, twenty-somethings, but there's been nothing like it since, and there won't be again in your lifetime. In a much more innocent age, with all the comparative technology of a horse and cart, they put a man on the moon. Wow.
But you've really missed out on something and it's something you're never going to experience.
It's fifty years today since the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the first man-made satellite to be sent up into space. It wasn't very big - about the size of a basketball. It orbited the Earth in ninety-eight minutes. It went round a few times, beeping so they knew where it was, and then burned up.
But it was the start of the Space Age - and now even that term, once so new and exciting, sounds old-fashioned.
By November the Soviet Union had sent up the next Sputnik, with a dog named Laika inside it.
The Americans weren't happy. If the Soviet Union were sending things up into space, then they could in future be used to carry nuclear weapons. They didn't like the idea of the Ruskies being ahead of them in the game, either.
So they quickly assembled all the latest technology - string, toilet-roll middles, the computing power of one of today's digital watches - and started working rather fast.
Twelve years later they had a man walking on the moon. It was a small step for the man, but a giant leap for Mankind.
And the Apollo missions were exciting beyond belief. They happened in black and white, of course - everything did in those days, certainly in our house, well into the Seventies. The breathtaking countdowns when we were waiting for the rocket launch. Ten - nine - eight - seven - six - whenever I see old film of it now it still gives me the same frissson of excitement.
"And now, over to Mission Control, Houston" - - and grainy shots of men sitting at banks of monitors. And then the astronauts talking from the spacecraft. Yes, from the SPACECRAFT! In SPACE! And all accompanied by the sssshing noise of what sounded like a Space Mission Cappuccino Machine.
They were going to LAND A MAN ON THE MOON! Incredible! And that feeling of excitement, anticipation and fear, all the time they were up there. With Apollo 13, when it all went wrong and the astronauts nearly died and it was touch and go whether they would manage to bring them back to Earth, it seemed to me as though the whole of Planet Earth was waiting and worrying. I knew even then that this wasn't so, but that was how it felt.
Earth was a much bigger planet then. No internet, of course, and even phone calls from abroad were very rare: so that whole-planet-united feeling was even more surprising.
The Apollo launches seemed to happen very often - and, in fact, they did, of course - so there was always another one to look forward to.
And Sputnik started it all. History is what you can remember, of course, and NASA's account of it may differ slightly from mine. But what I remember is the feeling. The heady excitement of it all.
I'm sorry, twenty-somethings, but there's been nothing like it since, and there won't be again in your lifetime. In a much more innocent age, with all the comparative technology of a horse and cart, they put a man on the moon. Wow.
posted by Daphne at 5:59 am
9 Comments:
You were up early this morning!!!
Did you notice that google has put a sputnik on their title page today.
I'm old enough to remember sputnik ... My dad had a whizzy short-wave radio and we listened to the war of words between Radio Moscow and Voice of America ... we didn't even have a telly.
Worst of both worlds, for me - I'm not so young, cool or sexy as I was in my twenties, and I can only be sure I was the first, but I'm not old enough to have lived through the Space age. But both the book and the film of The Right Stuff evoke the American panic and the perils of the space programme very well, without descending into hagiography, unless you count Chuck Yeager...
hummm ...comments seem to have trouble getting through from the middle of the Bavarian Forest
ahh ... because I was pressing VORSCHAU instead of VERÖFFENTLICHEN, sill me.
amyway, what I said this morning was that though everyone remembers Neil´s small step, not many people saw Buzz getting out. He came down the ladder and stopped, reaching round to tap the back of his space suit. Mission Control asked if anything was wrong and Buzz replied "Nope, just checking I´ve got the keys."
Ah - the comments got through from Bavaria at last. Just one small comment from John - thank you, I enjoyed it a lot! - but a giant step for international communications.
I vaguely remember some of the Apollo missions, but my space age excitement was with the shuttle missions especially the one called Enterprise! Technology has made huge leaps since then, I always wanted one of those flip open communicators that Captain Kirk had and now I have, but the Enterprise still doesn't respond!
Damn you Scotty!
Oh not you too, Daphne !
It was all filmed at Pinewood Studios and at one point, when Armstrong has taken that first step, fluffed his speech (he had one line to say for gawds sake...one line)and is walking away to leave room for 'that other guy', you can clearly see Reg Varney driving his bus across the set in the background.
His black and white bus of course.
Ian
Yes I remember being woken up at 3am and ushered down into the "front room" to watch those blurry images of Neil Armstrong doing the video for the Police hit "Walking on the Moon" on our Pye B&W television. Those were the days when America could afford to send men to the moon AND bomb Third World countries back to the Stone Age simultaneously.
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