Launch Of Sputnik Quotes

And so now, having been born, I'm going to rewind the film, so that my pink blanket flies off, my crib scoots across the floor as my umbilical cord reattaches, and I cry out as I'm sucked back between my mother's legs. She gets really fat again. Then back some more as a spoon stops swinging and a thermometer goes back into its velvet case. Sputnik chases its rocket trail back to the launching pad and polio stalks the land. There's a quick shot of my father as a twenty-year-old clarinetist, playing an Artie Shaw number into the phone, and then he's in church, age eight, being scandalized by the price of candles; and next my grandfather is untaping his first U.S. dollar bill over a cash register in 1931. Then we're out of America completely; we're in the middle of the ocean, the sound track sounding funny in reverse. A steamship appears, and up on a deck a lifeboat is curiously rocking; but then the boat docks, stern first, and we're up on dry land again, where the film unspools, back at the beginning...

When the Soviet Union launched Sputnik in 1957, my parents, like the rest of America, were terrified. The Soviets had nuclear weapons and now were ahead of us in space. So my parents marched me and Owen into our living room, sat us down, and said, " You boys are going to study math and Science so we can beat the Soviets!" I thought that was a lot of pressure to put on a six-year old. But own and I were obedient sons, so we studied math and science. And we were good at it.. Owen was the first in our family to go to college. He went to MIT, graduating with a degree in physics, and then became a photographer. I went to Harvard, and became a comedian. My poor parents. But we still beat the Soviets. You're welcome.

With the launch of Sputnik 7 in 1957 the Soviet Union had scored the first victory in what would be a three–decade space race. But in the crucial area of photographic reconnaissance satellites, it was the United States that jumped ahead, even if its success was not trumpeted. It was an advantage the United States never relinquished, always remaining ahead in crucial areas of reconnaissance satellite technology.

And so now, having been born, I’m going to rewind the film, so that my pink blanket flies off, my crib scoots across the floor as my umbilical cord reattaches, and I cry out as I’m sucked back between my mother’s legs. She gets really fat again. Then back some more as a spoon stops swinging and a thermometer goes back into its velvet case. Sputnik chases its rocket trail back to the launching pad and polio stalks the land. There’s a quick shot of my father as a twenty-year-old clarinetist, playing an Artie Shaw number into the phone, and then he’s in church, age eight, being scandalized by the price of candles; and next my grandfather is untaping his first U.S. dollar bill over a cash register in 1931. Then we’re out of America completely; we’re in the middle of the ocean, the sound track sounding funny in reverse. A steamship appears, and up on deck a lifeboat is curiously rocking; but then the boat docks, stern first, and we’re up on dry land again, where the film unspools, back at the beginning . . .

Nothing did more during these years to excite such emotions than the successful launching by the Soviet Union on October 4, 1957 of Sputnik, the world's first orbiting satellite. Sputnik was small—about 184 pounds and the size of a beach ball.

fact, there was no such thing at that time—or later—as a "missile gap," a phrase that Democrats and others flung at the GOP during the 1958 and 1960 election campaigns. The Sputnik launches indeed demonstrated that the Soviets had an edge in capacity for thrust—the ability to boost satellites into orbit. But in fact the Soviets lagged badly in the production of usable warheads and did not deploy an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) during the Eisenhower years.

Soon after launching Sputnik in 1957, the Russians launched Sputnik II with its passenger Laika (“Barker,” also known as Little Curly), the Soviet space dog. She was a female stray found on the streets of Moscow (and those godless Soviets let her die in orbit).

It is important to remember that in 1953 none of the technology for these futuristic journeys existed. No one knew how to go that fast and survive. Even the most optimistic die-hard visionaries did not expect a lunar landing any sooner than the proverbial “Year 2000.” The only voice telling them they could do it was a curve on a piece of paper. But the curve was right. Just not politically correct. In 1957 the USSR launched Sputnik, right on schedule. Then US rockets zipped to the Moon 12 years later. As [Damien] Broderick notes, humans arrived on the Moon “close to a third of century sooner than loony space travel buffs like Arthur C. Clarke had expected it to occur.

Mother nature took millions of years to remove all but one satellite, the Moon, from Earth’s orbit. The modern human has undone that process since the launch of the first Sputnik satellite in 1957.

We choose to go to the moon,” Kennedy answered, “We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win.” It was an audacious and dangerous plan. Not only had the Soviets launched Sputnik, the world’s first artificial satellite, in 1957, but Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin had beaten the first American astronaut into space by three weeks. The Space Race was on and the Americans were losing. Kennedy was undaunted. “It will be done,” he said. Then, in closing his speech, he turned to the past. “Many years ago the great British explorer George Mallory, who was to die on Mount Everest, was asked why did he want to climb it. He said, ‘Because it is there.’ Well, space is there,” Kennedy said, “and we’re going to climb it, and the moon and the planets are there, and new hopes for knowledge and peace are there. And, therefore, as we set sail we ask God’s blessing on the most hazardous and dangerous and greatest adventure on which man has ever embarked. Thank you.” The Great Himalayan Race hadn’t ended after all.

Reber’s telescope, though without precedent, was small and crude by today’s standards. Modern radio telescopes are quite another matter. Unbound by backyards, they’re sometimes downright humongous. MK 1, which began its working life in 1957, is the planet’s first genuinely gigantic radio telescope—a single, steerable, 250-foot-wide, solid-steel dish at the Jodrell Bank Observatory near Manchester, England. A couple of months after MK 1 opened for business, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1, and Jodrell Bank’s dish suddenly became just the thing to track the little orbiting hunk of hardware—making it the forerunner of today’s Deep Space Network for tracking planetary space probes

the financing for Engelbart’s work was flowing from the fount of “killingry”—the government’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA. DARPA was a direct response to the Soviet launch of Sputnik

the financing for Engelbart’s work was flowing from the fount of “killingry”—the government’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA. DARPA was a direct response to the Soviet launch of Sputnik 1 in 1957 and was set up to fund technology research projects that would expand the frontiers of expertise beyond the immediate and specific requirements of the military and its laboratories.

the roughly $800 billion in available stimulus, we directed more than $90 billion toward clean energy initiatives across the country. Within a year, an Iowa Maytag plant I’d visited during the campaign that had been shuttered because of the recession was humming again, with workers producing state-of-the-art wind turbines. We funded construction of one of the world’s largest wind farms. We underwrote the development of new battery storage systems and primed the market for electric and hybrid trucks, buses, and cars. We financed programs to make buildings and businesses more energy efficient, and collaborated with Treasury to temporarily convert the existing federal clean energy tax credit into a direct-payments program. Within the Department of Energy, we used Recovery Act money to launch the Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy (ARPA-E), a high-risk, high-reward research program modeled after DARPA, the famous Defense Department effort launched after Sputnik that helped develop not only advanced weapons systems like stealth technology but also an early iteration of the internet, automated voice activation, and GPS.

That night at his ranch, Lyndon thought that if he could take charge of space policy and mold the nation’s reaction to Sputnik, he might be able to launch himself to the presidency.

In October, 1957, Russia electrified the world with her first Sputnik. Built on plans stolen from the United States after World War II, Sputnik I, with a payload weighing 184 pounds, was successfully launched into orbit October 4th.