{"id":753,"date":"2007-10-04T11:22:10","date_gmt":"2007-10-04T16:22:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/?p=753"},"modified":"2007-10-04T11:23:54","modified_gmt":"2007-10-04T16:23:54","slug":"50-years-ago-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/?p=753","title":{"rendered":"50 years ago today…"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>October 4, 1957.\u00a0 50 years ago today.\u00a0 Russia (excuse me, the Soviet Union) launched Sputnik and, with it, humanity’s first\u00a0successful step into space.\u00a0 From Wikipedia<\/a>:<\/p>\n

“The surprise launch of Sputnik 1, coupled with the spectacular failure of the United States’ first two <\/em>Project Vanguard<\/em><\/a> launch attempts, shocked the <\/em>United States<\/em><\/a>, which responded with a number of early satellite launches, including <\/em>Explorer I<\/em><\/a>, <\/em>Project SCORE<\/em><\/a>, and <\/em>Courier 1B<\/em><\/a>. The <\/em>Sputnik crisis<\/em><\/a> also led to the creation of the <\/em>Advanced Research Projects Agency<\/em><\/a>, <\/em>DARPA<\/em><\/a> and <\/em>NASA<\/em><\/a>, and to major increases in U.S. government spending on scientific research and education…Sputnik 1 was launched on October 4, <\/em>1957<\/em><\/a>. The satellite was 58 cm (about 23 in) in diameter and weighed approximately 83.6 kg (about 183 lb). Each of its elliptical orbits around the Earth took about 96 minutes. <\/em>Monitoring of the satellite<\/em><\/a> was done by <\/em>Amateur radio<\/em><\/a> operators.”<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It is impossible to overstate the impact this event has had on\u00a0humanity.\u00a0 Other writers, much more talented than I, have waxed poetic about what the launch of Sputnik meant.\u00a0 Suffice it to say that without it and it’s follow on achievements (and failures), the world\u00a0would be a much different place, and poorer off, than it is today.<\/p>\n

???????????? !!<\/p>\n

And today, Google<\/a>\u00a0is displaying a\u00a0modified logo to celebrate this achievement.<\/p>\n

(Picture of Sputnik from <\/em>here<\/em><\/a> – click on it for a larger version)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

October 4, 1957.\u00a0 50 years ago today.\u00a0 Russia (excuse me, the Soviet Union) launched Sputnik and, with it, humanity’s first\u00a0successful step into space.\u00a0 From Wikipedia: “The surprise launch of Sputnik 1, coupled with the spectacular failure of the United States’ first two Project Vanguard launch attempts, shocked the United States, which responded with a number […]<\/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-753","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\/753","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=753"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/753\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}