Calling Major Tom

On January 30th, 1958, the first US satellite, Explorer I, was launched into orbit. It was a late entrant to the space race -- the Soviet Union had beaten the US into orbit by almost 4 months. Sputnik 1, the USSR's first satellite, was quite primitive, even by the standard of a 1980s digital wristwatch. All it did was transmit a beeping sound via radio waves back to earth. But it was on a frequency any sufficiently motivated amateur could monitor, and the whole world was rapt with attention.

Sputnik 1

Darn kids always stirring up trouble!

(Listen to Sputnik here. It's spooky!)

By today's standard, the US satellite Explorer I was also primitive, but it did carry a small number of scientific instruments and was the first spacecraft to detect the existence of the Van Allen radiation belt, giving some hint of the great scientific strides which would be taken with space exploration.

President John F. Kennedy kicked the space race into high gear when he announced America's intent to be first to land on the moon. JFK famously called the moon mission "the most hazardous and dangerous and greatest adventure on which man has ever embarked."

A generation of students was galvanized. How could they not be moved by the challenge to be a part of that adventure? The benefit to the US was great -- where the US had once lagged in science, technology, engineering and math graduates, the space race produced a long procession of these who helped make America the leader of the scientific and economic world.





But the supply of new scientists and engineers has fallen off in recent years, and as the average age of science and engineering employees crept inexorably towards retirement age, former President Bush established the Constellation program, a multistep NASA plan designed to take manned space exploration all the way to Mars. But going to Mars was only one of the intended benefits: It was also made to once again motivate a generation to dedicate themselves to STEM fields.

There's certainly plenty to explore. Look what we found when we pointed the Hubble space telescope at the darkest slice of sky we could find, where we supposed nothing at all existed.

Every dot of light is an entire galaxy.

Sadly, it is not to be. And one wonders where it all will end up.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

When national governments need to find out what an adversary is up to, they've got a lot of choices. Sometimes too many. It used to be simpler.

On January 23, 1918, the first balloon ascension was made by American Expeditionary Forces. Balloons enabled observation of enemy troop movements and preparations from many miles behind the front line. Being filled with hydrogen, they could also blow up spectacularly.

U.S. Army balloon accident at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, 1918

Technology progressed quickly. Aircraft soon took up the reconnaissance role, and in 1964, the Lockheed SR-71, the ultimate expression of this progression, first took to the air.

Lockheed SR-71

Designed to fly more than three times the speed of sound at more than 80,000 feet, the SR-71 flew too high and too fast to be intercepted by the 900+ missiles fired at it by the Soviet Union and its client states. When the President had a question, the SR-71 could be called on and, a few days and a few million dollars later, return with an answer.

The SR-71 was retired from military service on January 25th, 1990. Why? This represented the end of an era, and the beginning of a new one in which untouchable spy satellites were bolstered on the ground by increasingly pervasive digital intelligence gathering. Cheap cameras and pervasive data networks have turned whole societies into de facto watcher states. With such broad surveillance underway by not just government agencies but also private businesses and citizens, unintended consequences were inevitable, and they have caught even the most experienced intelligence arms off guard.

Israeli Mossad operatives captured on hotel CCTV during an assassination operation.

Just because something is possible, does that mean we should do it? I doubt it.

Also this week: The US Air Force in 1959 determined that only about 1% of all UFO reports couldn't be explained. Of course, it's a conspiracy.

You Dropped a Bomb on Me

On January 19th, 1910, aviators Louis Paulhan and US Army Lt. Paul Beck dropped three two-pound sandbags at an air demonstration in Los Angeles, proving that dropping bombs from aircraft was a feasible proposition.

Spiffy hat modeled by Lt. Paul Beck	Louis Paulhan

Was it progress? In any case it was the founding of a new technology of war, one which would quickly move on from its crude origin. Their demonstration almost didn't come off. It is often believed that lawyers have ruined modern life, but there they were in 1910, trying even then to spoil everyone's fun. The Wright brothers, who had first demonstrated powered flight in 1903, had patented pieces of their aircraft and attempted to halt Paulhan's flight. Aviators aren't generally known for backing down from a challenge, though, and the normally peaceful life of an unsuspecting piece of dirt was, if not ended, at least momentarily interrupted by a pair of rudely placed sandbags.


In 1911 Giulio Gavotti, a pilot serving in the Italian Army, first turned Paulhan's and Beck's theory into application when he pulled the pins from four grenades with his teeth, then dropped them onto a camp of Ottoman soldiers in Libya.

Guilio Gavotti

The attack made news. "Aviator Lt. Gavotti Throws Bomb on Enemy Camp. Terrorized Turks Scatter upon Unexpected Celestial Assault," screamed the headlines. (In fact, a post-attack inquiry showed that the grenades had either failed to detonate or exploded harmlessly, and most of the soldiers were unaware they'd been attacked, but the media didn't let the truth get in the way of a good story.)

Certainly some kind of progression was occurring. From 4 Italian grenades in 1911...





...35 years later, technology had marched on a bit.

Operation Crossroads Never before had a war engulfing half the world been ended with the application of a mere two bombs. But this one was. And that has to be some kind of progress.