Our favorite round, beachball-sized, constantly beeping friend turns 51 today. Or would’ve turned 51 today had he not burned up a bit in the Earth’s atmosphere. I like to spend my Tuesday evenings with PBS’ science program Nova, and this week’s installment covered all that you probably didn’t know about the Sputnik program and the advent of the Space Race…

“Listen now,” said the NBC radio network announcer on the night of October 4, 1957, “for the sound that forevermore separates the old from the new.” Next came the chirping in the key of A-flat from outer space that the Associated Press called the “deep beep-beep.” Emanating from a simple transmitter aboard the Soviet Sputnik satellite, the chirp lasted three-tenths of a second, followed by a three-tenths-of-a-second pause. This was repeated over and over again until it passed out of hearing range of the United States.

The satellite was silver in color, about the size of a beach ball, and weighed a mere 184 pounds. Yet for all its simplicity, small size, and inability to do more than orbit the Earth and transmit meaningless radio blips, the impact of Sputnik on the United States and the world was enormous and unprecedented. The vast majority of people living today, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, were born after Sputnik was launched and may be unaware of the degree to which it helped shape life as we know it. Now is an especially good time to take a fresh and focused look at the event whose impact looms even larger with the passing of time. In the last decade an incredible amount of once-secret material has been declassified and made public. Scholars and writers both inside and outside government have coaxed key Cold War documents out of hiding. Collectively, this material has given new dimensions and twists to almost every aspect of the events leading up to and following the launch of Sputnik.

For example, one recently released document reveals evidence of a long-forgotten pre-Sputnik “olive branch” extended by Russian scientists, who asked their American counterparts to supply a piece of scientific equipment for a planned launch. By most indications, this piece of equipment was meant for the third Sputnik.

It is not widely known even now that one of the reasons President Dwight D. Eisenhower and those around him did not react with alarm over Sputnik going into space ahead of an American satellite was that Eisenhower welcomed the launch to help establish the principle of “freedom of space” [the idea that outer space belonged to everyone, thereby allowing satellite flights over foreign countries]. At the time of the Sputnik “crisis,” the White House, Central Intelligence Agency, Air Force, and a few highly select and trustworthy defense contractors were creating a spy satellite that was so secret that only a few dozen people knew of it. Even its name, CORONA, was deemed secret for many years. Instead of being concerned with winning the first round of the space race, Eisenhower and his National Security Council were much more interested in launching surveillance satellites that could tell American intelligence where every Soviet missile was located.”
- Continue reading at Sputnik Declassified

To celebrate the beep that bummed the Western World out, here’s a space related Super Swingin’ Mix. Can YOU guess how each song relates to Sputnik? I’ll get you started – Laika was the name of the dog who accompanied Sputnik II a month after the first launch and the name of the British space pop group whose song “Almost Sleeping,” off their album Sounds of the Satellites, is found below.

MP3 :::
Laika – Almost Sleeping
Spacemen 3 – Hypnotized
Boards of Canada – Over the Horizon Radar
Raymond Scott – Twilight in Turkey
Raymond Scott – Ripples (Excerpt)
Belbury Poly – The Moonlawn
Stereolab – Golden Ball
Astral – Blinder
Space Needle – Scientific Mapp