{"id":672,"date":"2007-07-10T12:57:26","date_gmt":"2007-07-10T17:57:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/?p=672"},"modified":"2007-07-10T12:57:26","modified_gmt":"2007-07-10T17:57:26","slug":"telstar-1-launched-45-years-ago-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/?p=672","title":{"rendered":"Telstar 1 launched 45 years ago today"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"\/media\/Telstar1.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" width=\"174\" src=\"\/media\/tn_Telstar1.jpg\"  height=\"200\" style=\"width: 174px; height: 200px\" \/><\/a>Telstar 1, the world&#8217;s first active communication satellite, and also a product of the world&#8217;s first privately-sponsored space launch, was launched on this date in 1962.\u00a0 It&#8217;s hard to believe that we&#8217;ve only had this capability for 45 years.\u00a0 My kids have no idea what a world without this technology is like &#8211; just another sign of how old I&#8217;m getting, I guess.<\/p>\n<p>I remember the excitement that surrounded the launch and how my dad and I and the neighbors would go outside at night when a pass was scheduled to be visible to see if we could spot it &#8211; often times we could.<\/p>\n<p>The ties between Telstar 1 and a future Space Elevator are many:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Communications satellites were the brainchild of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.clarkefoundation.org\/\">Sir Arthur C. Clarke<\/a>, also the author of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Fountains-Paradise-Arthur-C-Clarke\/dp\/0446677949\/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1\/103-1147564-0437418?ie=UTF8&amp;s=books&amp;qid=1184089807&amp;sr=8-1\">The Fountains of Paradise<\/a>, the Sci-fi book which popularized the concept of Space Elevators.<\/li>\n<li>Reducing the cost of satellite launches will be a\u00a0major reason that a Space Elevator will be built.<\/li>\n<li>The launch of Telstar 1\u00a0ushered in the age of privately-sponsored Space launches, and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/?p=579\">my money is on private enterprise <\/a>to build the first Space Elevator.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Telstar\">Wikipedia article<\/a> on Telstar 1\u00a0makes for fascinating reading.<\/p>\n<p><em>(Photo from Wikipedia &#8211; click on it for a larger version)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Telstar 1, the world&#8217;s first active communication satellite, and also a product of the world&#8217;s first privately-sponsored space launch, was launched on this date in 1962.\u00a0 It&#8217;s hard to believe that we&#8217;ve only had this capability for 45 years.\u00a0 My kids have no idea what a world without this technology is like &#8211; just another [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-672","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-announcements"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/672","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=672"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/672\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}