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.