Shop OBEX P1 Docs P2 Docs Learn Events
Sputnik: 55 Years Ago Today — Parallax Forums

Sputnik: 55 Years Ago Today

Comments

  • RobotWorkshopRobotWorkshop Posts: 2,307
    edited 2012-10-04 15:41
    erco wrote: »
    22 days of beeping sure seemed like a threat back in 1957.

    Now it means someone is slow installing a new battery in the smoke detector....
  • PublisonPublison Posts: 12,366
    edited 2012-10-04 17:32
    Much more important is that "Leave It To Beaver" debuted this day in 1957. Definitely overshadowing that little basketball they called a satellite.
  • LoopyBytelooseLoopyByteloose Posts: 12,537
    edited 2012-10-05 09:53
    Somebody needs to explain to the Chinese that the US did not invent the spy satellite, Russia started the whole thing and we just had to catch up. Google maps really upsets them.

    Nikita Khrushchev got this whole technological race going way back then.
  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    edited 2012-10-05 15:40
    I don't know about the "spy" part but the English guy Newton pointed out that if you throw something up in the right way it will never come down but rather enter an orbit. After that, being humans, it was just a matter of time before someone did it. And never mind who started the race, Wernher von Braun, a German as it happens, had is eye on doing this long before any Russian premier.

    Now, as it happens the Ruskies did it first, but back in England a bunch of school kids was following their every move and even managed to decode the "beeps" comming out of those sputniks. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0835422/

    If only school projects were as much fun now a days:)
  • LoopyBytelooseLoopyByteloose Posts: 12,537
    edited 2012-10-06 13:12
    I actually remember as a kid participating in watching the night sky and tracking Sputnik as it went overhead - maybe it was a Cub Scout event.

    Everyone with a short-wave radio was trying to follow the beeps.
Sign In or Register to comment.