Focus 580; Sputnik: The Shock of the Century

This morning in this part of focus 580 we will be looking back to the launch of the first human made object to orbit the earth. And that was Sputnik which was launched in the fall of 1990. Now I'm only human. I'm not even sure I better not say that because suddenly I'm blanking out on the air. But the man who knows is here the telephone with us and we'll be talking this morning his name is Paul Dickson. He's an author a journalist. He worked for many years for McGraw-Hill. But since 1968 has been a full time freelance writer he contributed articles to various magazines and papers including Smithsonian Esquire the nation Town and Country. The New York Times and others and he has authored a new book. He's the author of more than 40 by the way of the new book which is titled Sputnik shock of the century. It is published by the.

Well I'm doing a great job here this morning I can even tell you who the publisher of the walker company is giving his last show of the week. As we talked this morning questions are welcome. The number here in Champaign Urbana 3 3 3 W I L L and toll free 800 1:58 W while any point here you have questions comments you can give us a call. Mr. Dixon Hello. Yes sir how are you. I'm fine thanks I don't know why in 1957 is the year and I know that I thought about the fact that when this happened I was four so I don't know why it is I couldn't summon that date from my memory banks anyway. You may remember because that's what gave you all that homework. Oh I see. Well obviously it is the science stuff didn't sink in because I'm a journalist and not a not a physicist today. Anyway this was the fall of October 4th 1057 and I guess. I think for a lot of people today as we are used to the idea of satellites we have spy satellites and communication satellites and weather satellites and people in space and people have been to the moon.

I think it's difficult perhaps for a lot of us to imagine the impact of the announcement that Sputnik had been launched and what that would have meant to people in 1957. I you know you're right I mean it was it was it was stupendous and and it was more it was more than the announcement the announcement was you know still something almost like a press release from from the Soviets I mean just a little you know wire copy but but what really really knocked people out was you can hear it first of all you can hear it I mean that that night I remember the night it went up. I was I was a I was 19 which would you say you figured that it was of our ages but I was 19 and I was a freshman at Wesleyan University in Middletown Connecticut. And I was walking across the campus and a friend of mine said you know the Russians are just put something up in space of course we both instinctively looked up and we ran back to the dorm and we turned on the radio and and I'll never forget the end of the NBC guy said.

I was Network Radio Network Radio and the guy said Listen now with the sound that will forever more mark the difference between the old and the new and then he starts playing the beeping sound then we realize we were listening to a sound from space that was that was human that was created by human traffic. And this so that was even more dramatic than the then anything was it was here and you could if you had a shortwave radio you could get it as it went over and you would be sitting there and it would you know it would go overhead and you you hear the B B B B B B cross the sky and you could and and of course the trump card in all of this was you could see it and I saw it for the first time about a week after it went up there was and the conditions were perfect and I walked out on the football field with a lot of other people. We got advance word about 20 minutes at a time it was going to pass over the central Connecticut. And I went out there and saw it. And that's what was the stunning thing. It was it was just awesome because you realize I mean it was

really like you were there for the first shot at Fort Sumpter where the Battle of Hastings I mean you were you were seeing history with your own eyes not filtered by television or anything else you're actually seeing it. And it was it was quite dramatic so it was more than just the announcement was that you know the the auto Bowl and the visual that also contributed to it. And as a piece of technology Sputnik itself was basically just a metal spear that had a transmitter in it right. Yeah it was not it was not high tech I mean Coryell of the brilliant Russian scientist we didn't know about until after he was dead. But the guy who invented you know basically created Sputnik was you know he was working with the slide really of anything approximating a computer. It was fueled not by some sophisticated rocket fuel fueled by pure kerosene. The batteries that ran the radio actually were too small radios that alternated the battery were mail order they bought them from a you know they read in a way that with a

check and got them from a company in England it was it was extremely low tech and it was Pylea polish and when the Russians you know make sure that they put the frequencies on bands of people to hear and they also polished it like crazy so that we could see it so that the certain you know dawn and dusk the sun the which is beyond the horizon would would reflect against it we could see it. And we found out many years later is a lot of us were actually seeing part of the rocket booster but but the fact remains we were seeing a manmade object that night and that was apparently that that was intentional and mistook our lives part of the design the aesthetics of it the fact that he said well like other satellites why don't we go ahead and make it round but he it was also his idea to have this highly polished surface. So in fact it could be seen right and it was right it was a ritualistic thing I mean they they draped it in velvet and they polished it every night and. I went to bed early and I think those guys knew these guys. And of course the Russians had the

the the the geniuses that were there which who we didn't even we could even imagine them. They had gone through all of the purges of Stalin and Stalin had killed his most brilliant scientists because they were thinking on you know impure thoughts or something and so they go and Corey Levitt spent years in the gulag where he kept his rocket work alive and finally finally the moderates get that bring him back into it if anybody's coming they take him out of prison again. But but if you realize how these guys were really really good and it hadn't been for the repressive sort of horrible nature of the some of the you know the iron fist of Stalin they would have you had probably even more great scientists at that time you know the certainly the the story that you tell really is a story of individuals and their contributions and this man it is interesting in part because he was somebody as you say that that until he was dead we didn't know about him but he was certainly I don't know if you would call him the father of the Soviet space program but certainly

was the man who was responsible for the three Sputnik launches and also for the for the tree. Guarin into space. So this was an extremely important individual This is Sergei Carla. Yeah and of course the the Russians at that. I mean the cold the cold war was raging so everybody had had I was worried about the other side and one of the reasons the Russians kept him quiet was kept his name secret and for a way from the West was they were afraid that when the right if the West ever realized how important he was to what they were doing that with that he would be he would be killed he would be assassinated by the CIA or somebody. So that was there were you know of course we were we were on the other hand we couldn't figure it out we didn't know who it was and we you know originally we thought well maybe they got a better German scientist than we did but they didn't and that actually got some some but they were they were not crucial it was really these this small crew under Coila who had this real vision of what they could do

and of course you know this is happening because when it went up we had no idea we were we were so insular and we were so dismissive of the Soviets at that point that the big joke the big joke is not very funny because I'm speculating but before Sputnik could be there had been articles in Collier's magazine and other places about the Russians having these portable bombs which they are nuclear weapons which I did they nicknamed suitcase bombs and they. Because they could be carried like a suitcase and the joke in America was we don't have to worry about the super pleased nuclear bomb from the Russians because then you have the technology to manufacture a suitcase and that was that was funny up a Sputnik and it ceased to be funny because we realized these people are really quite quite competent quite quite good and we were confusing the shoddy consumer goods. You know that the cars that weren't that great in the phones that didn't work with their resolve and their sort of desire to be progressive and move ahead.

Well that was maybe understandably what we saw the public face of Soviet technology with those things those are the things that you as an American if you would if you went to Moscow and walked on the street. That's the impression that you would get. But what you would not see would be all of this material. This effort that was highly classified and highly secret that was that they were doing their best to make sure that we didn't. Anything about what we did when we did yet I but the other point we didn't do our homework I mean we we had really become insular So I mean we didn't realize I mean they had translate We are great scientists was Goddard and we and the Germans had some great scientists and they had the Russians to translate all of our stuff but what. But but there was a great Soviet or Russian before used there before the revolution it was in soviet a great Russian theoretician in Phila KOSKY and and he basically came up with some of the most fundamental theories and postulates of rocketry in the 90s that are into the 20th century and when the revolution revolution came along they

elevated him to up to a high level because they thought of themselves as potentially good at going into space very early after the revolution. And we didn't know it. We hardly knew there were a few people who we hardly knew this guy ever existed. Yes he had some of the series and some of the the things that he developed. Are things which basically are the bases of rocketry So we we we we had some marginalized that the Soviet people. That we had that we were we we were in for the shock and we just there was one great example I found where of Verner von Braun the the the former German engineer who had come over we brought him over after the Third Reich it collapsed and a general Gavin who was the head of Army are indeed going to the Congress to the Senate and they were trying to tell the senators you know hearing that the Russians were about to go up with the satellite. And they were literally thrown out of the hearing room. I mean Ellen Ellen there who is the one senator who voted against

NASA's many years later he said I've been to Russia I've seen what these people get they can't tie their shoelaces get out of here and they they literally threw these guys. They were but they could you know I'm almost cited for contempt they threw them out of the area. And that's how and the other thing was I counted I went back through all the clippings before Sputnik and I found I probably missed something. But I found 25 references in The New York Times and the fact that the Soviets were trying to tell us they're going to put up a satellite. Well just going to call it and promise that person it will make you wait forever but it just it to make one for the point you want. The things that you talk about in the book is and is well it to the popular mind. The launch of Sputnik came as a big shock and a big surprise it was not a shock and a surprise to the government of the United States. Nor nor the certain level of scientists. There were certain would but it was true that the journalists weren't prepared the journalists just just I mean some some people call that a media riot. There were some scientists who'd never been in the

limelight before that sort of lost control and started making these wild predictions and Congress in the eyes of the President Eisenhower the CIA there were certain people in power who were very much aware of what was going on. But but to a large degree the rest of us didn't. You know we didn't want to know or we refused to look at the science the tealeaves that were very clearly out there. Our guest this morning Paul Dickson He's a journalist and author he's contributed. Nickels to many magazines and papers he's written more than 40 books the one we're talking about here this morning if you're interested in reading it is titled Sputnik the shock of the century. Walker and Company is the publisher should be out there in bookstores if you will look at it and questions of course are welcome. 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 we also have toll free line good anywhere that you can hear us 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5. We have a couple of callers here the first is in Charleston line for Hello. Thank you very much for taking my call. Just maybe somewhat of a tangent here but at

least to me interesting. I happened to be in my undergraduate studies at the urban campus in the fall of nineteen fifty seven taking an introductory astronomy course from Professor Stanley Wyatt. And it was just absolutely fascinating to be there and to have had that experience. But I think a very unpredictable. And one thing I wanted to mention that Eunice just said that this had not been a shock to the government of the United States and I would some extent take issue with that because at least if memory serves the University of Illinois had an operational tracking station at that time which again this particular memory if memory serves here was in operation at a time when our so-called Vanguard network was not yet online which would indicate to me that at least

somebody There was caught a little bit off guard. And it certainly offered an opportunity for the students in our class and other personnel at the U of Ife to be in a very most than advantaged position where others were basically not able to sit around and read the newspapers about it but in our case to actually participate in some of the tracking operate logging trances. In this particular case I thought I would just drop that in there. Yes. You're exactly you're exactly correct. The the people who actually did because the Russians didn't go up on the vanguard you witchery the Vanguard network actually went up on October 1st. But that was set to the frequencies for the International Geophysical Year which is what Vanguard was going up on which we thought the Russians were going to use. But what we had in this country at that time and put together by a very sort of bio of small group based in Cambridge and MIT and Harvard was it was a group of amateurs who would track these things and you know

academics not just amateurs but academic departments other people who were not part of the official government business but but who were part of just a tracking network and so a lot of the people who made history a lot of people said the most important information back were people in small colleges and amateur astronomers and other people like that so it was. But you're exactly right I mean places like University of Illinois where we're crucial to figuring out what was going on so we could start making doing our tracking and of course the tracking. The amazing thing was as soon as we started tracking and hearing the beep of the American mind sort of went into action and that's when the group at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab came up with the idea of using it for Global Positioning So the first global positioning experiments were the ones that we knew now have been golf carts and cars and things that tell us where we are in the face of the globe that was begun within a couple days of Sputnik going up. Hope that gets at the question of the quote. Let's go to an Indiana listener here line number one.

Hello. Yes. I'd like to thank you for having the guest it's a chance for me to read it. Visit my college career too in 1957 I was a college freshman and what I thought was most interesting your guest might comment on it. When the first satellite went up I don't remember it was probably 100 150 pounds something like that it was very small and everybody said well that's great but oh it's a little ours you're going to be much bigger. And I believe within the next six to eight months the Russians put up their SAT second satellite and if I recall it was around eleven hundred pounds. And that really took us by surprise. Well you're exactly well. Well you're right in the sense that the first one was one hundred eighty seven pounds but that for us was huge because we thought our of our scientists immediately thought that they'd misplaced a decimal point it was 1.8 seven pounds because our first satellite which we were building the Vanguard was the size of a grapefruit and that only rate about four pounds and we were thinking all the Russians could never get a hundred and

eighty seven. The next thing the Russians put up which is on in November of 57 a month later a little more than a month later when Sputnik 2 with china dog in it and and we had a life support system in the next one they put up in March of 58. It was the size of a Lincoln Continental all of those replete with tail fans which had which which basically was a laboratory of Earth circling laboratory so we were stunned and of course when ours goes up everybody's mocking ours because when we get the Vanguard up which is the earlier second satellite but it's the one we've been working on and what people don't realize is that we really it's a perfect satellite it's been miniaturized we're using these new circuits it's a it's a powerful little thing but Khrushchev says it's nothing one of more than a grapefruit and it's everybody's making fun of us for this little satellite when in fact the little satellite was really the most the most advanced of them all because it incorporated this high so high level of technology that can only be achieved through miniaturization

going to go back again did this question of how much the United States knew about the Soviet effort and in particular at the at the highest level you know say at the at the level of the of the the President Mr. Eisenhower who just you know how much they knew about what the Russians were were planning on doing. Well you have got to go back to 50 55. July 30th 55. We announce that as part of the International Geophysical Year which is an attack multi-national attempt to sort of explore the universe or the our planet in the atmosphere in the in the close you know the closed space near us. We announced that we were going to put up a satellite on July 30th 1955. The next day the Russians made the similar announcement they said they too were going to put up a satellite from that point on the military and the government really took them

seriously and they they kept an eye on it. They they were watching the whole time we could have gone up. We could have gone up and beaten the Russians in any point after 55 and we were Von Braun and the army had come devising our five on five separate occasions and begged them to let the United States put a satellite in orbit. And I said How are in the top people in the government said absolutely not we're not going to let it happen and in one point in fifty six. In September of 1056 it is rumored that Von Braun the German engineer at Werner von Braun and general midair as he was the head of the army Missile Command and several other people were going to have an accident as a last solemn oath. They're going to send up of the rocket and they're going to actually release the first stage was going to go into orbit be the first man made satellite. Eisenhower hits the roof and actually sends people down from the White House to prevent this accident from happening. So all the way along it's like a poker game. We know we've got the cards. We

know we can go first the units at the highest level of government knows that the Russians are probably going to be as worse we Eisenhower says the only way we're going to go up is using a civilian satellite which is the vanguard. We weren't we. What I think was afraid of and this was his genius and this is the I think the crux of the story that I tell in the book Ike Ike was really concerned about nuclear war. Ike did not want the third world war to happen he did not want the United States and the rest of the world to be destroyed. So he very early early in administration he went to Khrushchev and Bill got in in Geneva earlier and actually 55 and said Look fellows we really want to have open skies Milam because sure we know where every one of your nuclear weapons is and you can have you can have access to our skies and you can see where our nuclear weapons are and they said absolutely not it's out of the question at that moment I think started the top the highest level of secrecy to develop spy satellites well before Sputnik. He wanted to he was building 5 spy satellites so what so that we could go up and look at the Soviet Union and see what was going on.

When Sputnik goes up Eisenhower secretly pleased even though it's an embarrassment to his inspiration and everybody criticizes them because when it happened in one moment was as certain as that Sputnik crossed the Mississippi. And which it did every hour and a half. He knew that we've established the principle of freedom of space which meant if we didn't protest the Soviets or we didn't try to shoot it down or something else they had they basically violated our airspace. So so in part of Eisenhower's grand plan we now had the upper hand in the sense that we now have permission to go and look and see roll those missiles were hit by the same token Eisenhower. The battle behind the scenes is between isin our and certain top people who want to keep space for the for the civilians for the port communications surveillance but which is really a way to prevent war but you know for for surveillance for. For communications for television for all the stuff which is peaceful weather

satellites and Earth you know looking at the Earth from developing our agriculture and such versus the military which wants it that the military really wants space as a weapons platform. And I do and I do now and then later Johnson and I can sort of hand this off to this fight for a civilian agency. And then Kennedy we finally we basically what we have is a civilian space program. Our guest in this part of focus 580 is author journalist Paul Dickson. He has been since 1968 a full time freelance writer. He's contributed articles to many magazines and newspapers just to mention a few Missoni in the nation. The New York Times and The L.A. Times. He's the author of more than 40 books the one we're talking about here this morning is Sputnik the shock of the century as published by Walker and company. So it is out there in bookstores if you'd like to read the story. And questions are also welcome from people who are listening. The number here in Champaign Urbana 3 3

3 9 4 5 5. We also have toll free line a good anywhere that you can hear us 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5. How how is it that it is John Kennedy who's the one who says the United States is going to go and put a human being. That's a good question because you could because I think initially I actually found out where Kennedy was the night the Sputnik went up and Kennedy and his brother but Robert Kennedy actually stopped in a bar in Boston called Locke Ober and we go in there for a late night drink and the the the bartender has become a big fan of space very pro pro space gets an argument. There's another professor from MIT there named Dr. Abrams and I and John F. Kennedy makes is huge argument against spacing it's a waste of time a waste of money. He may have been just doing it to do up you know apparently the Kennedys often would take different sides of an issue just for them to be provocative and sort of get ideas on the table but I think it I

think it grew on and I think I think he really began to see something out there that wasn't that wasn't self-evident. And I think I think one thing that was a catalyst I think was the Bay of Pigs we had. Kennedy went to the Congress to ask for the moon to be landing a moon landing shortly after the Bay of Pigs when America's Morrell was very low and we had we were doing well in the world. But I think what happened and I think this really dawned on Kennedy I think it I mean I know it dawned on John McCormick who was the speaker of the house during those years and actually wrote a book on this topic. What what was what was increasingly perceived was this that if we got to a battle with the Soviet Union over them basically a huge contest which would have real heroes and real expenditure of national you know wealth and you know huge effort and the whole business that it was a phenomenally sort of a few useful surrogate the nuclear war where you

spend all this money and then destroy each other and destroy the planet. But here was a way in which you could basically have this mammoth contest between superpowers that could show how bright brave and how smart they were. And but there was a surrogate that was that was better than having the war I mean it's not even in the same category as having a war. And I think Kennedy I know McCormick one of the reasons McCormick didn't really care about space what he really cared about was preventing nuclear war and I think that was that. I never found it written from my by Kennedy but I think that may have been part of his thinking because the other people at that time were thinking that way. And I think make remand The Croods of some of the the moderates in the Soviet Union who are fighting their own sort of military right who wanted basically to make everything a military confrontation whereas they the Russians thought that they had a really good chance of beating us to the moon. Did he think oh did those people think much about everything else

that would follow technology spending. And so forth or was it mostly just the symbolic achievement of having that that American set foot on the moon. Yeah I think they saw they saw this big big much bigger picture and I think it was evident early I think there's a chapter in the book where in which I talk about how Eisenhower gets involved very early in this he picks 88 of the people he can most trust and they put up their own satellite. This is he's really doing this to prove that he is the he's being so beaten down by his own military everybody's attacking him in the post Sputnik weeks and he says that he basing it he have a stroke and all these things are out of the deal but there's this one moment of 58 where he gets 88 people together and secretly puts up his own satellite with his own voice on it when it which is which is in G summer of 58 in which he says. You know peace on earth goodwill towards men with his message message. I think what he's

trying to do there. I think what he does in the field he basically steals the space from the military at that moment and they're furious from him brought in all these other of the powerful people involved in space are marginalized they're kept out of the picture and I think does this one of them is old buddies in the Army Signal Corps guys and you know it's a couple of friends of his in the Pentagon he live like a bunch of guys that so they're going to go you know put up a satellite. It's one of the present United States and I think at that moment I think is the line was drawn that this country was going to do a lot better. It used all this technology for good and for communications and for good cetera et cetera because here's you know I put his voice on the satellite and every everybody in the world overnight saw the utility of this. You know so the idea that space could be this great place to bounce messages and bounce television images off of and radio etc. and so I think early on they didn't know that it was going to give us cell

phones and laptops and all the rest of it. But they did see as soon as they saw that we have to re-engineer everything and make it miniature all the computers all the things that went into the spacecraft those manned and unmanned. We're now reaping the harvest of that because they had to re-engineer everything to get rid of the vacuum tubes make things you know circuits that could do a hundred thousand things no bigger than your thumb nail. And this was all part of that whole the whole space thing. So I think it became evident to people I think we went forward that there was going to be this harvest of other things that were going to come to us. I'm sure that some people will and will know that and as you explain in the book that some of these folks who were the early rocketeers that is the post-war rocketeers came to the United States from Germany and had worked in for the Nazis and designing vetoes. And Braun was one of them and you did tell the story and that they he

and they knew that the end was coming that Germany had lost the war and they asked themselves who would we most want to be captured by and engine in fact engineered there and made it possible for them to come over to the United States and a lot of very important rocket scientists then came to the United States and started developing rockets for this country. There also was a connection between the Nazi rocket program and the Soviet Union in the sense that again some people who worked in the program then went to work for the Soviet Union. Although we don't perhaps hadn't given it that much attention because the people that we perceive as being the most important came to the United States and yet the Soviets did manage to take advantage of what those scientists had learned in building rockets for the Nazis. Yes. But we I think we got far far better in the deal we got for a car after freight car parts. Braun was a shrewd shrewd man and he had basically all the plans of it. They were the top guys I mean von Braun was the top man

and he brought all the top people and I said you know they say they didn't want to be captured. They'd go to Russia. They say they were afraid they had been bombed they've been killing Brits Brit British people by but large numbers of civilians say they felt that they'd see if the British got them they would be tried as war criminals if the French they had used a lot they had their factories in a tenement where they were building the B-2 and the V-1 and 20000 prisoners died in those factories they were fed 400 calories a day and they worked until they died of starvation. Von Braun and his people were very much aware of these people and they felt that or the feeling was at that time that if the French had gotten them they would have tried them as were criminals as well because they knew a lot of the people in those factories besides Jews and other people who would you would normally associate with the Holocaust and with what was what the Germans were doing to people. A lot of those

people were the French resistance they threw them in the inn. So there are a lot of French dying in these prisons or these really work camps they call them. They were underground and they you know they just die and it was the first weapon system in the history and they think the V2 killed 8000 20000 died building. So you had 20000 people die and more people died making the weapon than it did from the weapon itself which is an extraordinary sort of equation when you think about it. So those guys are worse. They decided they would find the Americans. America was still fighting Japan and they knew that America had had basically disregarded its own own geniuses in the rocket field. Goddard that the Germans would learn a lot from. Who was a little bit of a maverick but America had never treated him with any any great respect. And so they realize that they could now become the American rocket program and they would be the one hundred twenty odd came over and we exempted them from all the rules and put you know put them in into a into a place where they could work with the choose and develop the

American rocket program. We have caller dock with here in Champagne County let's do that line before. Yeah a lot of people stop. Because of all the potatoes that went into making alcohol for the fuel for the two well it's another blow back. That's another whole story. This isn't germane but people know that's a code word anyway. I wanted to talk about the blowback of the Sputnik gone the academic community and others. I think I leased a doctoral thesis at the occasion Policy Studies Institute at U of I don't know if it was ever made a book it seems like it should be and maybe you do have some reference to this. We haven't gotten to talking about how it affected the curriculums in the academia. Schools I've watched it and I was right on the cusp so I saw the pre chem study B C C S post Sputnik. Educational things and then I saw the earlier ones too from older relatives and the transformation was pretty phenomenal the older ones had a

lot of industrial examples particularly in chemistry and the newer ones post but integral sort of designed to be the foster research scientists I mean and I think it's important for academia to do research but it seems to had a sort of an. Unanticipated effect of isolating. The scientific community from from on the ground in real real life industrial things and I think that has had a huge There I have a comment on that I have another point too. Here you are you have first let me let's do that first because because you hit on a fascinating subject which very few people I mean everybody knows it had a phenomenal effect on curriculum reform you know the my my short form for younger students was that we went from Dick and Jane to Dr. Seuss almost overnight we started making our kids think we were educating more women etc. etc. and the effect on curriculum was you know we fundamentally killed Latin and

Greek as a high school science you know subject and we were having language lives with the impact of education was monumental and still being felt. But what's the point you're driving at which was the unintended negative effect has been documented in several books including a book by Ernest. It's Ernest in Eugene Ferguson Freeman from Johns Hopkins which. He makes the point that we became so theoretical after Sputnik that we couldn't. We took the time to take kids in engineering school that didn't and never been tinkers and never played around with cars and that we had were designing things like the Hartford Convention Center that collapsed under the weight of wet snow because it was designed on a mathematical model based on where they didn't make the snow heavy enough and so he was claiming that we lost that sort of down to earth practical kind of engineering and science that we had which we had experience before hand and we are now going to a new kind of level of science that was so theoretical that it often backfired and he uses examples right up

through some of the Martian misplacing a decimal points on the Martian man Martian thing. So you make an interesting point very few people ever talk about the negative effect the other expected I would question was ma a large part of the Sputnik reform and secondary education was really intended for that. The talent and gifted of the time and that a lot of people sort of got left behind. They were driving trades trade subjects out of high schools you couldn't have it you couldn't have a a course in auto mechanics in an academic highschool anymore after Sputnik it was it sort of marginalized that second half of the class or the lower half. And that may have been a dilatory. It's more like the bottom 80 percent if I recall. Yes it might've been different different places. The other point is the kind of mad fancy that the space era engendered there's a great early book called arming the heavens by a guy out of the Syracuse peace

peace community. This documents all of the incredible fantasy life of basically Pentagon types about what you know war in space was going to be like and how it was going to give us full spectrum dominance and that it was you know and I really I think was formative for like people like Rumsfeld who do the space commission. We do have peaceful use of space treaty that hasn't been talked about much that will also be abrogated if if we go ahead with the kind of things that are being talked about. I think that's part of the blowback to it but it is mainly another story which I I'm sure this you know call in show will return to on another day. You know you get once again you bring up something that's fascinating to me because. Actually you use the word Pentagon which has become a code word for the highest level of people I think what was happening back in the 50s was that they were the some of the real cerebral people in the Pentagon actually won it. I actually wanted the

secretary defense level McIlroy and others really wanted was a civilian space just like before that the Pentagon you know the Pentagon lost the fight for the atomic energy. In other words the Pentagon wanted control of all things nuclear and they lost it and they lost it's of the atomic energy was Commission was formed in its stead. What happened with space was I think that the real the real people who wanted to do this war in space and some of the stuff is unbelievably look back at the old life magazines from that era and they were talking about using rockets you know to go into space or over the earth once and then land a whole new tune of men in a foreign country and they would be armed they job jump out of his nose cone and you know start shooting people and they were visioning all these bizarre and huge stations in space with all sorts of laser guns and missiles and they could be you know any insurrection in small some small republic would be brought under control in a matter of minutes and this kind of stuff was going on and I think. Again you know the fear the fear

is and I think some of our some of this some of that had we just couldn't go that way just because the devastating thing and I think that every once in a while that that monster raises its head. Well actually this is my last comment to author Jack Hanna whose name comes to me in the book I mentioned arming the heavens had a later article that talked about the upsizing of the space shuttle for exactly that kind of military mission of taking troops to a different place on the earth in a in a hurry. And he actually says that that upsizing was unnecessary for other other uses of space the peaceful uses that you don't really need to take the cargo on the same vessel that the people go up on you can dock in space where it is. And he says that's one of the reasons why it's more dangerous than it should be. But I let that hang in the air and listen the rest of your show thanks a lot. Thank you. Let's go on here we have another caller in their next line. What else. Yeah two things I understood that when but Nick when

up there were and you were referring to the beeping sound that you got from it. People realize that if they put a clock up there it would be really useful for you navigation. It's a little bit like the idea of that that recent book about. I think his name was Harrison. A fellow developed the clock like chronometer. It would work out an ocean going vessels that if it if you can just set up a satellite then all you had to do is listen to the time and the exact time according to the satellite What ever happened with that. Will you know you start me on that I don't know the answer to that. That's the thing I do know is that it was in fact that the beep itself which was had a little bit of telemetry in it but it was it was raw intents and purposes it was meaningless. But the beep itself was a it was a boon to science because they I think we've already mentioned the global positioning people realized that navigation would never be

the same because we had we knew where the thing was going to be at every moment so that we could track that. But I just I'm unaware of the of the business with that with the clock in space. Yeah I heard that that right replacing that beep with a time you know like we've got nowadays. But the other question the hang up for this one. It just seems to me. I mean I was really affected by it but Nick I named my first dog Sputnik which was luckily we lived out in the country but it seems like the Talking a little bit close to what the last caller was talking about that the Star Wars initiative is another seems like another threshold event but not so much. Only we're kind of playing the Russians here and the rest of the world is playing the people watching this weapons platform develop

over their heads. And just curious if you had any thoughts along those lines. And I'll hang up. Thanks. Yes you know again it's going to be brave here and say that I did. I'm just really not that qualified to discuss spar was because I'm sure I'm still not sure I know exactly what is true and what isn't I still I still go back to a theory that several people have talked about a lot of what we did was during the Reagan years with Star Wars was a bluff that we just didn't really have the technology. There were a lot of it was again going back to the poker game we would we would show some films in front of a congressional committee and say Here is how great this thing works and why are the assumption being that that it would go back to the Soviet Union and say well we can't match this and that it was a lot of it was a bluff. I think it'll be years before all that stuff becomes the class of I don't know what is true and what isn't so I'm going to back off in a minute can I I just don't know the answers there. We're just coming down the point when we have a minute or two left and we talk a little bit about Sputnik and and

pollen. Thanks and technology would you do in time for a little bit about the impact of Sputnik on popular culture. Well it's everywhere I mean it's just I'm looking at a tape that a friend of my mate called Sputnik rock n roll and all of a sudden it was it was music and it was and it was in books and it was I mean the if i guess my favorite example of somebody who was affected in the arts was Stephen King it was 11 year old kid in a movie theater in Stratford Connecticut they were watching the you know one of these films called the Earth versus flying saucers one of those old movies where the Martians come down and immediately you know abscond with with women from the beaches of Santa Monica were dressed in bikinis and the kind of movie. And in the middle of this movie the theater owner runs in and turns on the lights and said Boys and Girls and rockets and the Russians put a rocket in space. God save American King says that this brought him a Reaver days he worries that that you know there actually bombs up there and I drop it on his house and that he becomes you so that's the beginning of the thread the beginning of what made Stephen King. So it's these are all different things like that and the other thing of course it was after Sputnik we started

spending money on even even on the arts even on educating people in every other we started upgrading everybody's education there's a lot more money to send a child a kid who couldn't afford to go with say a top school or an engineering school. They've only been able to afford to go to a trade school. The government started handing out money so a lot of people did they didn't have to do in science they could do it in the in in a painting or something so so we really did sort of ratchet up everything after Sputnik. Well we can leave it at that as we hear at the end of the time we want to say you Mr. Dixon thanks very much for talking with us today. Thank you so much. Our guest Paul Dickson and he's journalist author and if you'd like to read the book that we have been talking about the title is Sputnik the shock of the century. It's published by Walker and company and is available now in the bookstores.