Forty-eight years ago today, Sergei Korolev and his band of Soviet engineers launched the first artificial satellite. While it did not set off the mass panic that has become a popular myth, it certainly sparked a wave of change comparable to that produced by the atomic bomb. Arthur C. Clarke said at the time, "I had not expected it in the least. But I knew that it would change the world."
Naturally, I can't help mentioning that the Sputnik story is told in The First Space Race, by Matt Bille and Erika Lishock, with Foreword by Dr. James Van Allen. (Texas A&M University Press, 2004).
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