I remember it well - the day that I
believe became the defining
moment in science education in this half century. I was in high
school. I had a date, of sorts, which in itself was a very rare
event. While waiting for her to appear, I heard the announcement.
The news was on the television in her parents' living room - and yes,
I had heard it correctly: The Russians had successfully launched an
artificial satellite. Tracking stations monitored its passing every
ninety minutes. It was in orbit. I was in shock. Excited,
enthralled, fascinated, and yes, in shock. It is hard to find the
words that come even close to expressing the feelings. For the first
time in history, man had just broken free of earthUs gravity. (That
was not really true, of course, but I did not know it at the time.)
Just as Isaac Newton had conceived it nearly three centuries
previously, if an object was given a high enough initial speed and
the proper trajectory, it could be in a continual state of freefall -
with the arc of its motion being mirrored by the curvature of the
earth. But why was it the Russians? Where were we?
That last question, of course, set in
motion a transformation in
American higher education that is with us still. The immediate
reaction, however, was typical of the way we always react to the news
of monumental events - especially ones that are perceived as
catastrophic. Denial. Those of us that remember November 22, 1963
will forever recall the helpless feeling at the initial news reports
of that day - surely it could not be true. It was the twentieth
century, after all. And presidents do not get shot in the twentieth
century. The reaction to the news of an orbiting Soviet satellite
was similar:
It must be a hoax, I thought. Man has never sent anything into
space before - at least not outside our atmosphere, certainly not
into orbit. Our rockets are not that powerful. Surely their
technology is not superior to ours. They must have made the
announcement to the world to gain an enormous propaganda coup - to
frighten eastern Europe into submission to the great Soviet superpower.
But surely it is not true! Of course, how would we ever know? Even the
Russians claim that the satellite is no larger than a grapefruit. How
would we possibly know if they are telling the truth? That must be it.
They claim to have orbited a satellite - and hence forever will claim to
have been first even after we actually accomplish that task. And we will
not be able to deny it. But wait - we have tracking stations picking up
radio signals ....beep....beep....beep.... exactly as they had said.
How did they do that? Could they have also tricked our tracking
stations into believing they had detected a signal from an orbiting
satellite?
Those were my initial thoughts, as
well as those of an entire
nation - in fact, of the entire free world! Why? Because this was
the very same Soviet nation that tested megaton yield thermonuclear
devices - and had only one year earlier rolled their tanks into
Hungary - and whose Premier would say on the floor of the United
Nations RWe will bury you!S And we all knew that any country capable
of placing an object in orbit around the earth - just as the moon is
in orbit around the earth - could also launch the very same rockets
laden with warheads that could conceivably bury us.
With all of that in mind, I still
hoped that the news was true. To
me, it was one of the most exciting events imaginable. I did not yet
know that I wanted to be a physicist. I had not yet conceived that I
would spend my entire adult life at a university. But the idea that
man could not only understand why a satellite could orbit the earth,
but could also DO it was so intriging that it drove science education
for the next two decades. It drove students to want to participate
in the adventure. It drove colleges and universities to revise their
science curricula. And it drove the government to increase its
funding for both pure and applied research as a way to regain our
technological advantage over the Soviet Union. I, and probably most
of this countryUs science and engineering faculty, can trace much of
our academic and professional interests and opportunities - at least
in part - to October 4, 1957.
EPILOGUE: I wrote this on my laptop while listening to Dvorak
symphonies on CD. The incredible developments in micro-electronics
that make that all possible is a direct consequence of the space race
- our nation's need to beat the Soviet Union to the surface of the
moon.