We are the children of Sputnik

We are the children of Sputnik

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Fifty years after start of the space race, the change in our mind-set
is evident all around us

Thursday, October 04, 2007
BY SASWATO R. DAS

Today is the 50th anniversary of the beginning of the Space Age. On
Oct. 4, 1957, in the midst of the Cold War, the Soviet Union launched
the first man-made satellite, Sputnik I. It stunned the world,
especially America, and set off a space race between the two
countries. The climax was the first Apollo moon landing.

Now that the Cold War is over, many are saying that the Space Age has
fizzled out. We haven't been back to the moon in more than 30 years.
NASA's missions have grown modest. The Russian space program is in
dire straits.

If you had asked space enthusiasts back in the 1970s what we would
achieve by 2007, they would have predicted that humans would be to
some of the other planets in the solar system.

Where are the moon bases, the hotels in orbit, and spaceports catering
to regular spaceflights? Shouldn't we have been vacationing on Mars,
or at least the moon, by now?

If one looks at the path of technological progress through history, it
doesn't always progress linearly, at a constant rate. There are
periods of accelerated growth, when some major invention spurs rapid
development. Then come relative lulls, characterized by incremental
progress, until there are big spurts again. Such was the case with the
first iron tools, with the printing press, and the steam engine.

In the years after Sputnik I, Space Age progress was driven by the
competition and macho posturing between two superpowers engaged in the
Cold War. Having lost primacy in launching the first satellite, the
U.S. took on the challenge to be first to set foot on the moon. The
two nations raced to be first not only to prove their technological
prowess but to win the hearts and minds of the world. Once the race
ended in 1969, the urgency changed, and the Space Age suddenly seemed
old news.

Yet Sputnik forever changed the landscape of scientific research in
the U.S., leaving a legacy we see all around us today.

In 1958, largely as a consequence of Sputnik, President Dwight
Eisenhower signed the National Defense Education Act, channeling $1
billion into science education over the following four years. Almost
every major U.S. university benefited. Doctoral programs in the
sciences expanded. NASA was set up. Suddenly a lot of science was
conducted in the public eye. An immense creative output from the newly
minted scientists and engineers spurred and forever changed the
technological landscape.

To those who think the promise of space has dimmed, I would draw a
parallel between the launch of Sputnik I and the design of the first
practical steam engine by James Watt in 1769. Both were momentous
events in human history.

Sputnik showed us it was possibly to escape our earthly shackle, even
if for only a short period. The steam engine allowed human machinery
to finally escape the limitations of power drawn from a team of
horses.

Fifty years into the Industrial Revolution, an observer would probably
have felt that the initial momentum had slowed down. It wasn't until
1819 -- 50 years after Watt filed his patent for the steam engine --
that the first steamship, the Savannah, crossed the Atlantic. The
first electric motor, the first regular railway, the first telegraph
machine, the first photograph, and the first sewing machine were yet
to be invented. But the human mind-set had changed forever, as it
would again with Sputnik.

A more accurate gauge of what has changed since Sputnik is probably
seen in the dials of progress in semiconductor technology, a lot of it
spurred by Eisenhower's investment in science education. The first
integrated circuit would be built by Jack Kilby the year after the
Sputnik launch. Transistors were relatively new, having been invented
at Bell Labs only 10 years prior.

Fairchild Semiconductor (which, along with H-P, spawned Silicon
Valley) was just coming into being. Fifty years later, a state-of-the
art microprocessor chip contains more than a billion transistors. (To
put it in economic terms, if the price of an automobile had kept pace
with the price drop of a transistor, we would be paying less for a car
than for a slice of pizza.)

It is hard to predict what the next 50 years will bring. Will human
beings finally reach Mars? Earlier this year, NASA started a series of
missions to prepare for a crewed mission to Mars. Will we see a
permanent human outpost on the moon? Will the Voyager spacecraft, now
at the outer reaches of the solar system, on its way to the stars --
the farthest any human machine has ever journeyed -- discover
something incredible?

Now that so many planets are being discovered around other stars, will
we lay to rest the question of alien life?

One thing is for su Space is now part of our destiny. We are all
children of Sputnik.

The science writer Arthur C. Clarke has said that later civilizations
will remember the 20th century as the time when human beings made the
first tentative journeys into space. I asked him recently what he
thought would come next.

"Before the current decade is out," he predicted, "fee-paying
passengers will be experiencing suborbital flights aboard privately
funded passenger vehicles, built by a new generation of engineer-
entrepreneurs with an unstoppable passion for space. And over the next
50 years, thousands of people will gain access to the orbital realm --
and then, to the moon and beyond."

As Saul Bellow wrote in "Mr. Sammler's Planet" in the heady days of
the Apollo program, talking of our forays from Earth, "So I suppose we
must jump off, for it is our human fate to do so."

For a child in school today, it may not be wrong to dream of a
vacation on the moon.

--
Saswato R. Das, who lives in New York, writes about astronomy and
astrophysics.

Where's my child support?

Scott Hedrick wrote:
Where's my child support?

COMRADE! In the more socially-enlightened east, there is no need for
child support!
They are moved from the full-bosomed nipples of their mothers to the
shovels of the Ural mineral mines without skipping a heartbeat!
Child support? Here in the USSR that concept involves a child with a
pneumatic jackhammer suspended on leather straps over a rich lead-ore vein!

Pat!