Alan Boyle and his readers remember their memories of the event.
Physics Today looks at and links to the history of the Sputnik launch and it’s aftereffects.
David Pescovitz excerpts Arthur C. Clarke’s reaction to the event from an interview in the October IEEE Spectrum.
Republican Congressman John Culberson (TX-7) blogs about the forgotten lesson of Sputnik, while Democrat Senator and Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton (NY) uses the anniversary to pitch a science policy long on platitudes and short on substance.
Larry Abramson at NPR recounts how Sputnik spurred a much-needed revival in science education in America, and Rep. Vernon Ehlers (R-MI) uses the occasion to look at new federal education initiatives, while Gerald Bracey at HuffPo tut-tuts over how the American “failure” Sputnik represented was turned into an unfair critique of the U.S. public educational system which scars its reputation to this day.
Sputnikmania! — cool clips from what looks like a cool documentary. The John Glenn clip is bizarrely funny, but the director’s commentary makes me wonder about the political slant of the finished product.
And of course, now the truth can be told.