Fifty Years Since Sputnik 
Fifty years ago, before most people living today were born, the beep-beep-beep of Sputnik was heard round the world. It was the sound of wonder and foreboding. Nothing would ever be quite the same again — in geopolitics, in science and technology, in everyday life and the capacity of the human species.
It was an unprepossessing agent of alarm. A simple sphere weighing just 184 pounds and not quite two feet wide, it had a highly polished surface of aluminum, the better to reflect sunlight and be visible from Earth. Two radio transmitters with whiskery antennas issued steady signals on frequencies that scientists and ham operators could pick up, and so confirm the achievement.
The Soviet Union had launched the first artificial satellite, a new moon, on Oct. 4, 1957. Climbing out of the terrestrial gravity well, rising above the atmosphere and into orbit, Sputnik crossed the threshold into a new dimension of human experience. People could now see their kind as spacefarers. Their enhanced mobility might someday prove as liberating as the first upright steps of hominid ancestors long ago. ect.
This article and the diagrams as well put the tiny spacecraft Sputnik into true historical perspective--especially for those of us too young to be able to remember it as more than a history fact. Reading this you get a feel for what the "Red Scare" was really like to live though. We are paranoid today in many ways but during the space race era we never wavered in the hyper-intensity of our rivalry with Russians.
The USA finally won the space race only to lose enthusiasm and let many grand plans for space development die on the vine.--Cyn
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