As imaginations leapt ahead, the science fiction of spaceships and interplanetary expeditions started to be spoken of as real possibilities. The power that could take a satellite into space could also send a nuclear warhead across continents. I also recall a playground ditty (to the tune of Perry Como’s “Catch a Falling Star”) – “Catch a falling Sputnik, put it in a matchbox, send it to the USA”.Īt issue was not just the success of the supposedly backwards Soviets but the military implications of their apparent lead in rocket technology. The Americans’ embarrassment at being beaten by this first dramatic move in what became the space race was compounded a few weeks later when the US Vanguard rocket barely managed to rise a single metre before it fell back and exploded. As an eight-year-old in October 1957, I recall listening to Radio Moscow broadcasting the beep-beep-beep of Sputnik 1, the first Earth satellite, on my brother’s tinny transistor radio.
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May 2023
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