Happy 50th Birthday to the Space Age

"At times reaching for the stars means you need the will of a nation, at times you need a large rocket, and sometimes you just need open eyes."

4 October 2007

We love milestones with round numbers. Some simply look nice as an image on a page; others bound something so memorable and profound, it's difficult to capture what they meant to our species. That's where I'm at, looking back at an era which spans most of my life, and nearly all of my dreams. Leaving home, whether a house or planet, is a classic story told over and over through legend - and in the last half century, as the documented living history of human culture. Many of us were fortunate to witness much of the uproar between the major social-cultural camps that followed the launch of Sputnik I. The technological and military implications of a satellite were known well before 1957, but no one really grapsed the cultural shake-up which surrounded the first successful Earth orbiter. A simple show of lifting capability, mostly a prideful boast from an industrial nation with a philosophy to sell, became a defining event for our planet. The threat of an adversary gaining the highest of high ground... a fear of inferiority in more fields than rocketry... the audacity of a foreign government, all generated strong emotional reactions across the world. Sputnik kicked my country in the gut, and left us feeling second best. We an arrogant and proud bunch, and don't take one-upsmanship very well. Yet by the time we raised up to take a breath,our ideas began churning and our spirtits began to rise to the task.

The resulting government and industry push brought attention, funding - and leapfrog gains in research and education. The U.S. and the West responded strongly and rapidly to what became a true landmark event, and set out to really make up for lost time. Fortunately, the West often responds well to challenges, especially those with deadlines. The contest ultimately became the utterly famous race to the nearest reachable planet - a series of events like nothing else before or since. The goal was visible in the sky, and everyone knew what it was and why it was important. Even in the great anti-climax of low Earth orbit operations that characterize the latter part of Act 1, Sputnik's robot successors have travelled farther than anything built by humans. Deep space probes have brought us wonderous images and head-scratchable new data for cosmologists. The latter half of the first 50 hasn't offered the same level of first-hand wonder - we've been left to ponder from a standoff distance. But significantly, we are still taking outward steps, even though they aren't made by astronaut's boots. In Act 2, the plans and hopes are there - yet the mandatory political support remains a question. Does the latter half of the Space Age Centenniary look to be a golden era, or another long pause?

But we didn't stop completely, and the voyage out of Tsiolkovsky's cradle is a slow and measured journey. So how were these early decades? How do we mark this phase? Astronaut Michael Collins explained the first years of the Space Age succinctly and eloquently: What was it all about? It was about leaving!

-- JW

"The Lighter Side of Going to the Moon"