Fifty years ago, on the 4th October, the first Russian Sputnik was launched and marked the start of the space race. Firing a silver beachball with four antenna into space led to America then galvanising the Apollo program to get Neil Armstrong and friends on the moon just 12 years later.
Sputnik Zemlyi helped give a name to the beatnik generation and heralded the Americans and Russians doing amazing things with relatively ancient high-technology - old space capsules are filled with relays and electro-mechanical componentry.
Of course, part of the agenda of sputnik was Russia's attempts to build ICBM (intercontinental ballistic missiles) and the sputnik was a first attempt to get a payload into orbit. The agenda of both superpowers continued to be around advanced weaponry and the Americans built the halls at Canaveral big enough so that rockets could be assembled ready to fly rather than having to be upturned and then fuelled (which could take more than a day).
So using today's custom Google, I checked the name of America's first satellite...Explorer 1, which orbited some four months after Russia's first success. And less than four years later the Russians put Yuri Gagarin into space in April 1961. Right now there's some 25,000 man made satellites orbiting earth with some 8,700 still in managed orbit and the remaining 16,000 or so in various stages of decay. Russia accounts for 10,000 of the broken units and the USA has around 4000 of the ones still active. So, a few days ago, when I was looking at the International Space Station, there's some comfort to knowing it is at least a symbol of co-operation between the major countries involved, rather than owned by a single superpower with a big ray gun.
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