([Published October 25, 1996, Valley News, subheadings added)
Sputnik Started It All
Do you remember what started the space race nearly forty years ago? Sputnik.
In the mid-fifties, the United States and Russia both announced plans to launch artificial satellites. We were all shocked though when the Russians beat us with Sputnik. Just 23 inches in diameter and 184 pounds, it was the first satellite launched into space–October 4, 1957.
How could that backward country win the race over technologically superior America? As a teenager [I was 13], I felt vulnerable. Our Iowa farm, where we didn’t even lock our doors, no longer seemed safe. On October 9, I recorded in my diary, “The Reds launched ‘Sputnik’ (little moon) last Fri. It is slowing up.”
[Nikita] Khrushchev gloated that Communism had won over American capitalism.
It was also a psychological race with propaganda value. Atomic scientist Edward Teller called it a technological Pearl Harbor. Historian David Halberstam referred to it as America’s “national crisis of confidence.”
The idea of Sputnik, actually meaning “fellow traveler” in Russian, was fascinating and repulsive. Even as a small child, I had been afraid of the Russians. Our Madison County [Iowa] farm lay under training routes for Air Force planes. When bombers flew low, they would be right over us without warning–loud and menacing. As I watched those reminders of war disappear into the horizon, fears about the Russians would be stirred up again.
Sputnik II
One month after Sputnik was boosted into space, the Soviets launched Sputnik II, six times heavier than the first one. It was even more intriguing because it carried a live creature, a dog named Laika. We learned when to watch for “Mutnik,” as we called it. Still suffering from the Asian flue, Mom woke us all up at 4:00 a.m. one November Saturday. We wrapped up in the blankets she warmed on the living room stove and waited in the cold just beyond the porch and watched the heavens.
We saw exactly what Dad expected–nothing. He thought it was all a Russian trick.
Two days later, I recorded, “Today we hear that the dog in Sputnik II died because they put poison in his food.” That was because the Soviets were not going to attempt to try to recover the satellite.
We did get to see Sputnik II, though–a dot of light silently crossing the cold crisp sky. It seemed to blink off and on, explained by the tumbling motion it made. It was marvelous, and scary. How could those cruel Communists get ahead of us?
After the embarrassing explosion of our first attempt to launch a tiny four-pound satellite, which was called “Kaputnik” and “Flopnik” by international newspapers, the U.S. finally boosted Explorer I into space January 31, 1958.
The fall of 1959, the Soviets succeeded in sending two probes to the moon, one of them sending back the first picture of the far side of the moon. I was in high school and it was discouraging. We students were urged to take math and science classes.
First Americans in Space
Russians also outdid the United States with a dog in space, with one orbit around the earth, April 12, 1961. Three weeks later, American Alan Shepard rocketed into space, a fifteen-minute flight, but did not go into orbit.
By the time John Glenn made three revolutions around the earth in 1962, the Russians had already made sixteen.
You probably remember watching all the [American] launchings on TV and those risky splashdowns at sea.
In March 1965, I was in college, about to have my first date with my husband-to-be, when a Soviet astronaut subdued us again with a walk in space. Then in early 1967, Ed White was killed with Gus Grissom and Roger Chaffe during testing of their [Apollo 1] command module at Kennedy Space Center. They were engulfed in flames when a spark caused pure oxygen in the cabin to explode. America was in shock.
July 20, 1969. It was right before my husband left for Vietnam with the Air Force. We listened to every TV minute of the Lunar Lander touching down on the Sea of Tranquility–and man’s first steps on the moon. There were a few pictures sent back, too, but we mostly had to listen and imagine–with dread and awe–as two American astronauts explored the moon for a couple of hours that morning. Men on the moon, a dream come true, after the agony of Sputnik began it all just twelve years earlier.
Space shuttle launches, first begun in 1981, are now almost routine. Landings are made on a runway instead of the risky ones in an ocean.
But watching the launchings and landings still fill me with mixed feelings–dread and awe–just like watching the first men on the moon, or Sputnik floating over our farm.
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Do you remember those mixed feelings when Sputnik was launched?