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American Space Age Reaches Fifty Years

Posted by Soulskill on from the fly-me-to-the-moon dept.

Bryansix brings us a story about the 50th anniversary of the United States' entry into the Space Age. On January 31st, 1958, Explorer 1 became the first U.S. satellite to reach orbit. The New York Times is running a similar feature. "Explorer 1 gave America a chance to recover some of its confidence and prestige after the Sputnik shock, but there was a scientific payoff as well: The data returned by the satellite showed that Earth was not surrounded by a swarm of killer pebbles, as some scientists had feared. However, the cosmic-ray readings hinted at the existence of bands of radiation surrounding the planet - an unexpected result that led to the discovery of the Van Allen Belts."

7 of 101 comments (clear)

  1. Not A Triumf For America... by Maljin+Jolt · · Score: 2, Informative

    American Space Age Reaches Fifty Years

    But in Soviet Russia, Space Age Reaches 51 Years:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sputnik_1

    --
    There you are, staring at me again.
  2. ... and pointless by EmbeddedJanitor · · Score: 3, Informative
    The knowledge obtained by deep space reasearch might be interesting of itself, but that's just infotainment.... pretty thin in terms of actual applicability or importance to people or this planet.

    Let's face it folks: going to the moon in the 1960s was more about politics than it was about science. Had to get one over the commies. Now that the political motive is no longer there it is very hard to justify spending up on a 1960s scale space effort.

    No wonder NASA still has a shuttle fleet that is 25 years old - or half as old as the whole US space effort.

    --
    Engineering is the art of compromise.
  3. Re:December 14 by Vectronic · · Score: 2, Informative

    "the next planned human lunar landing Orion 17 will also be by NASA, and is planned for 2019, but no later than 2020"

    Quoth Wikipedia.

    It would also freshen up the conspiracy theories, which would be a nice change..."nah, they did it all in LightWave, its not real"

  4. Flat spin by Media+Withdrawal · · Score: 5, Informative

    One of the less well-known aspects of Explorer 1 was how it surprised controllers by changing its axis of spin. It was launched spinning about its theoretically stable long axis like a drill bit, but due to mechanical energy dissipation in its flexing antennas, it ended its first orbit in a flat spin--"like a juggling club" according to this book, which points out that the same would have happened to O'Neill colonies without constant dynamical control.

  5. Re:erm? by evanbd · · Score: 2, Informative

    Indeed. The date of the last footprints on the Moon.

  6. Re:erm? by AJWM · · Score: 3, Informative

    Nope. The golf player was Alan Shepard on Apollo 14. Apollos 15-17 did a lot more science, they had the Rover to travel further, landing technique was where they could land more interesting places, and on the last mission they finally landed someone (Harrison Schmitt) who was trained as a geologist first, not a test pilot.

    --
    -- Alastair
  7. JPL Amateur Radio Commemorative Event by dtmos · · Score: 3, Informative

    To celebrate this anniversary, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Amateur Radio Club, W6VIO, is offering a commemorative Explorer I QSL card for each contact made through February 4th. See their operating schedule for times and frequencies of operation.