50 Years in Space, Sputnik 50th Anniversary Options

[nprev]

Here's a music clip about Sputnik that I made from the song "Surprise!" and some vintage footages of the early Space Age.

Bolshoi surprise indeed, Thu; thank you, that was extremely cool!!!

BP, I share your concerns. Although the latest projections don't say Malthusian disaster this century, we all know damn good & well that something happens, eventually; hell, the geological record clearly indicates that catastrophic events are the very engine of evolution, and the fact that we are a voilitional, contentious species vastly increases the likelihood of such events.

High time to hitch the wagons; high time to go out into space, seek fresh vistas, see things that have never been seen...time to secure our future, before time runs out...

[dvandorn]

Although the latest projections don't say Malthusian disaster this century, we all know damn good & well that something happens, eventually; hell, the geological record clearly indicates that catastrophic events are the very engine of evolution, and the fact that we are a voilitional, contentious species vastly increases the likelihood of such events.

No need to worry -- we all know that the world will only end just as soon as quantum reality coalesces around the event of the Chicago Cubs winning the World Series. No less than a picosecond before that event occurs, this world, aye, perhaps even this entire universe, will meet its end.

But since this is the Cubs we're talking about, I don't imagine we have anything to fear anytime soon... wait, what's that, you say? The Cubs just won their division and are in the playoffs?

Uh-oh...

-the other Doug

[edstrick]

pointers ---> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXteSV8rBwY

For those that don't know it. Leslie Fish's "Hope Eyrie" (sung here by Julie Ecklar)

I can't listen to it without crying. Hard.

[Stu]

I've written a piece about this which I hope will get accepted for this week's "Carnival of Space". Far too long to put in a post here, so if anyone's interested please feel free to take a look...

Space Age: RIP

[marsbug]

Very sad words stu, although well crafted as ever! I hope that before anyone here gets much older things will begin to change. EDIT: I was born in the early 1980's so perhaps I dont feel as betrayed as some here might. I remember school teachers telling me how all space travel would be over by 2000 because there was nothing out there worth the effort. And I see today how nothing much has changed out there, and how many hold the same point of view as my teacher, and how we are still dreaming of space and still striving to make the dream happen.
Part of me is surprised that my teacher was wrong, the rest of me is just very glad that he was!

[nprev]

Excellent, Stu. Thanks for giving such a strong voice to these feelings we all share.

Ed, thanks also for posting that video link...had tears in my eyes as well.

<rant mode> God, oh God, why can't people see the nobility and vast importance of this??????? Is it really that we're not wise enough to at least act in our own long-term self interest?

Marsbug, I hope your teacher lives to eat his words, sans condiments.</rant mode>

[Stu]

RETREAT

Half a century since Sputnik bleeped,
leaping from the frozen steppes, creeping
up on a sleeping world to whirl
around a startled Earth; no surfing
of websites then, just frightened men
and women scanning the sky with wide
and “Can it be true?” eyes
for The Sputnik’s fleeting spark
cutting through the dark, a grain
of shining diamond dust – the first
ever seen – gleaming and rushing through
the night, a wondrous sight to celebrate
or terrify, depending on the country
you called Home…

Half a hundred times since then
our watery world has whirled around
the Sun and all the dreams
that Sputnik’s fleeting flight inspired
seem to have blown away. True, shuttles fly,
a space station skates across the sky,
but we are exiled on the Earth.
The blue and green world of Man’s birth
remains his only home, though once
we roamed the Moon’s ancient, ashen plains,
played golf on that alien land, planted
flags of bright red white and blue
and our footprints in its grey dust too –

But no-one walks on Luna now;
no lights shine in our satellite’s dark seas,
instead it mocks and teases us
as it moves across the sky,
wondering why we ran away and didn’t
stay to lay foundations for a second
home for Man. I cannot understand;
it makes no sense to stand in such
a glorious, golden place
only to turn your face away
from the Future’s blinding light.

I am ashamed of our Dunkirk retreat
from the solar system’s nearest beach;
afraid that in a thousand years
historians and scholars will sneer at us
and, hearing Armstrong speak
those famous New World words
will think our age absurd, and curse
our generation for its timid toe-dip
in the surf of the ocean of the night.

© Stuart Atkinson 2007

[SkyeLab]

Nice little article on the BBC website on this which also has a link to some footage of the launch (some in colour that I don't remember seeing before).

Article: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7027199.stm

Launch footage: http://news.bbc.co.uk/player/nol/newsid_70...sb=1&news=1

Cheers

Brian

[ustrax]

Half a hundred times since then
our watery world has whirled around
the Sun and all the dreams
that Sputnik’s fleeting flight inspired
seem to have blown away.

Dear Stu...Although that is a great poem I don't agree with the negative portraits I've been reading lately...
My perspective is slightly different, you know I'm an optimist by nature and to me the path is always onwards and upwards...or full speed down an abyss... ;-)

EDITED: Oops! Forgot it...HAPPY BIRTHDAY Спутник!!!

[Stu]

Sorry ustrax, don't mean to sound exclusively negative. I celebrate the wonders we've achieved, obviously, I'm just saddened that we fled the Moon prematurely and left the exploration of the solar system to spaceprobes instead of living, breathing human beings. As wonderful as the images returned by Cassini, Voyager and all the other aluminium ambassadors despatched from Earth are and have been, I'd much rather wide-with-wonder human eyes had seen those magnificent landscapes through space helmet visors, you know?

And, truth be told, I'm just mad at Maggie Philbin for lying to me when I was a kid and telling me on Tomorrow's World there'd be people exploring Mars when I grew up. You let me down Maggie, oh you let me down so badly...

[jamescanvin]

Great words USTRAX, you put how I feel in much better words than i could ever manage.

I'm in awe about the achievements of the last 50 years from a small nitrogen filled sphere to the sophisticated probes scattered throughout the solar system and a permanent manned presence in orbit.

Apollo was way ahead of it's time, IMO. I guess, as I wasn't around back then it didn't give me an impression of what to expect and the disappointment when it turned out to be false.

If we can make as much progress over the next 50 years as the last, I'll be a happy 80 year old.

Onwards...

[ngunn]

And, truth be told, I'm just mad at Maggie Philbin for lying to me when I was a kid and telling me on Tomorrow's World there'd be people exploring Mars when I grew up. You let me down Maggie, oh you let me down so badly...

It's easily done, Stu. Your poem on the subject could be construed as a 'promise' by today's babies when they're old enough to read it. All human enterprise is a fragile, precarious affair. For the present state of things I think we just have to count our (considerable) blessings. As to the future: imagination and hope are indispensable, expectation unwise.

[djellison]

Maggie Philbin

I saw her getting off a train, which I then got on, here in Leicester yesterday afternoon. I'm sure she said there was going to be the dice sized holographic cube to put music on...and that would have been the early '90s.

WHERE'S MY CUBE!

(and my flying car)

Doug

[ngunn]

Well at least your train turned up! And I suppose the phones and typewriters have got a bit cleverer over the decades . .

[Stu]

As cute as Maggie Philbin was - and still is, having seen her this morning on the TV, in a Sputnik 50th anniversary piece filmed at the British National Space Centre in Leicester... probably where she was heading when you saw her Doug - I realised years ago that she and the rest of the TOMORROW'S WORLD team wouldn't know the truth if it fell on them wearing a big hat with "I AM THE TRUTH" written on it... they promised me that these new-fangled "CDs" were so strong you could eat your lunch off them, they couldn't be scratched, and they would "last forever" (hahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!), that by 2000 we'd all be working in "paper-free offices", and that there'd be a manned Moon base by the time 2001 rolled around for real.

Pants on fire, definitely...