Hampton Roads Publishing Company Blog

From http://www.skyandtelescope.com/news/10206211.html

A Celebration of Spaceflight
October 4, 2007
by David L. Chandler

The following essay is adapted from the introduction to Space: 50 Years and Counting, now available in leading bookstores and newsdealers or directly from Sky Publishing.

With a steady “beep-beep-beep” broadcast from orbit on ordinary ham-radio frequencies, Sputnik 1 signaled the birth of the Space Age on October 4, 1957.
© Sovfoto

Fifty years after it officially began on October 4, 1957, we still often refer to the era we live in as the Space Age. Our extraterrestrial explorations have planted a set of mileposts in our memories — from those first brief forays into weightlessness to permanently occupied space stations, from spindly probes snapping a few pictures while whizzing past a distant planet to rovers probing every nook and cranny and telescopes peering into the deepest vastness. It’s no surprise that venturing beyond our home planet is considered by many to be the defining achievement of our era, a symbolic pinnacle of human civilization.

But for the United States, at least, the Space Age began not with glory but with worldwide humiliation.

In mid-1955 President Dwight Eisenhower declared that the nation would place a scientific satellite into orbit during the International Geophysical Year, a worldwide 18-month stretch of cooperative research. The IGY kicked off with much fanfare on July 1, 1957, with the US envisioning a satellite launch later that year. But before the planned Vanguard satellite ever met its rocket, on October 4th a persistent beeping from orbit revealed that the Soviet Union had orbited the world’s first satellite, Sputnik 1, and in doing so had won the first leg of what would become a race to space.

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a fascinating example of perception versus reality. I remember the day well, October 4, 1957. I came home from school and the afternoon newspaper was headlining the unbelievable: The Russians had done it first!

The inside story would have been even more fascinating, as we now learn.

Secrets of Sputnik Emerge 50 Years Later
By VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV,
AP
Posted: 2007-10-01 17:38:13

Filed Under: Science News, World News
MOSCOW (Oct. 1) - When Sputnik took off 50 years ago, the world gazed at the heavens in awe and apprehension, watching what seemed like the unveiling of a sustained Soviet effort to conquer space and score a stunning Cold War triumph.

But 50 years later, it emerges that the momentous launch was far from being part of a well-planned strategy to demonstrate communist superiority over the West. Instead, the first artificial satellite in space was a spur-of-the-moment gamble driven by the dream of one scientist, whose team scrounged a rocket, slapped together a satellite and persuaded a dubious Kremlin to open the space age.

And that winking light that crowds around the globe gathered to watch in the night sky? Not Sputnik at all, as it turns out, but just the second stage of its booster rocket, according to Boris Chertok, one of the founders of the Soviet space program.

In a series of interviews in recent days with The Associated Press, Chertok and other veterans told the little-known story of how Sputnik was launched, and what an unlikely achievement it turned out to be.

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From The New York Times, via Truthout.org

Arctic Melt Unnerves the Experts

By Andrew C. Revkin
The New York Times

Tuesday 02 October 2007

The Arctic ice cap shrank so much this summer that waves briefly lapped along two long-imagined Arctic shipping routes, the Northwest Passage over Canada and the Northern Sea Route over Russia.

Overall, the floating ice dwindled to an extent unparalleled in a century or more, by several estimates.

Now the six-month dark season has returned to the North Pole. In the deepening chill, new ice is already spreading over vast stretches of the Arctic Ocean. Astonished by the summer’s changes, scientists are studying the forces that exposed one million square miles of open water - six Californias - beyond the average since satellites started measurements in 1979.

At a recent gathering of sea-ice experts at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks, Hajo Eicken, a geophysicist, summarized it this way: “Our stock in trade seems to be going away.”

Scientists are also unnerved by the summer’s implications for the future, and their ability to predict it.

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Pretty insightful (and grumpy!) so I like it. I particularly like this line: “In 20 years, The Cat in the Hat will be read as a commentary on unreliable home health care workers.”

From http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/02/opinion/02brooks.html?ex=1191988800&en=319a8b579bd2e90c&ei=5070&emc=eta1

Sal Paradise at 50

By DAVID BROOKS
Published: October 2, 2007

A few decades ago, before TV commercials became obsessively concerned with prostate problems, Jack Kerouac wrote a book called “On the Road.” It was greeted rapturously by many as a burst of rollicking, joyous American energy. People quoted the famous lines: “The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn.”

In the Times review that launched the book, Gilbert Millstein raved that “On the Road” was a frenzied search for affirmation, a book that rejected the ennui, pessimism and cynicism of the Lost Generation. The heroes of the book savored everything, enjoyed everything, took pleasure in everything.

But, of course, all this was before the great geriatric pall settled over the world, before it became illegal to be cheerful.

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