50 years ago today, on October 4th 1957, a small silver satellite was fired into the sky above the Soviet Union. It orbited the Earth once every 96 minutes and it beep-beep-beeped its way across the skies. It looked like a four-legged football, and it scared the willies out of the US government. Its name was Sputnik1, and its launch heralded the start of the Space Age. How things have changed since then.
1957-1982: During the first half of the Space Age, humankind made great strides towards the stars. The Russians sent the first dog and the first man into space (the man came back, the dog was not so lucky). The Americans responded by throwing billions at the Apollo programme which ultimately delivered twelve mento the Moon. This period also saw the first space station, the launch of the interplanetary Voyager missions, a robot on Mars and the first flight of the reusable Space Shuttle. All in all, bloody impressive. Well done humanity.
I am a child of the first half of the Space Age. I grew up during an era of infinite possibilities, where the night sky was the limit. I had (and still have, in a box somewhere) several books about space travel and astronomy. One of my first memories is of watching flickery black and white pictures of astronauts in big white suits bouncing around on the Moon. Some of my favourite TV programmes looked out to the planets, and the stars, and beyond. It seemed as if my future could, even would, involve venturing above the atmosphere at some point. How very wrong I was.
1982-2007: During the second half of the Space Age, humankind sort of gave up on space. Voyager reached the edge of the solar system and explored the outer planets, but not much followed. The Space Shuttle's heyday was shortlived, scuppered by accidental tragedy. Men and women set endurance records in the International Space Station, but they didn't really do anything exciting. Countless satellites were launched into orbit, but most of them pointed down to earth rather than out towards the universe. And most disappointingly of all, nobody's been back to the Moon since I was at infant school, more than a third of a century ago. The final frontier appears to be closed.
When I was little, "21st century" was a watchword for our dazzling technological future. In the new millennium we thought we'd all be rushing round in hovercars wearing silver suits and chatting to aliens on our wrist radios. No such luck. Stanley Kubrick's 2001 seemed perfectly attainable in 1968, but somehow reality hasn't kept up with our expectations. Space travel hasn't delivered lunar shuttles or extraterrestrial discovery, just all-pervasive satellite networks and teflon non-stick saucepans. So much for those Sputnik dreams.
2007-: Today there's seemingly no political will to reach for the skies. Inner space has become a playground for über-rich billionnaire tourists, and outer space is pretty much off the radar. There's no sign of any immediate return to the Moon, nor are any serious interplanetary missions scheduled for the forseeable future. Space exploration doesn't make economic sense, so it doesn't happen. Which is a damned shame, and a very blinkered view of the universe.
As we become increasingly aware of planet Earth's limitations and fragility, maybe it's time to look beyond our overheating atmosphere and once again to reach for the skies. May that first pioneering spaceflight not have been in vain. Beep-beep-beep.
50 years ago today, on October 4th 1957, a small silver satellite was fired into the sky above the Soviet Union. It orbited the Earth once every 96 minutes and it beep-beep-beeped its way across the skies. It looked like a four-legged football, and it scared the willies out of the US government. Its name was Sputnik 1, and its launch heralded the start of the Space Age. How things have changed since then.
