Happy birthday, Sputnik!
When I was a kid, the space race was as big a deal as the cold war and the arms race—in fact, it was inexorably tied to those parallel contests. And the event that started that competition, the launch of Sputnik by the Soviet Union, happened 50 years ago today. For those who don’t remember that period, it’s difficult to describe the passion this nation felt for space travel in the 60s and early 70s. I remember, even as a kid, being swept up in the excitement of the new “space age.” My early heroes were test pilots and astronauts, not rock stars or sports figures. There was a sort of boundless optimism about space in those days; even as the U.S. struggled with the Kennedy and King assassinations, the Vietnam war and Nixon, the final frontier offered a new hope that we could pursue our dreams to infinity and beyond (yes, this sentence was crafted for both film geeks and SEO hacks). A movie like “2001” didn’t seem so far-fetched back then; space stations, giant computer-controlled starships, and contact with alien life forms in about 30 years? Why not? After all, we went from Sputnik to Apollo 11 in just 12 years. What couldn’t we accomplish in another 30? Of course, we all know what really happened. And, when I woke up this morning, instead of being able to visit a lunar colony or vacation on Mars, I ended up visiting Woot, where a one-day commemorative Sputnik shirt was already sold out. Yes, I lived through the space race. And I didn’t even get a stupid t-shirt.
