The story had begun in a seemingly different age, in the years of Eisenhower.

On October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union had successfully launched the satellite Sputnik,

prompting worldwide worry that the Communist Empire would win the space race.

Today, a new moon is in the sky, a 23-inch metal sphere placed in orbit by a Russian rocket,

one of the great scientific feats of the age.

In the Senate, Lyndon Johnson of Texas ranked the Sputnik news with the great inflection

points in world history.

Johnson said that Rome had controlled the world with roads and the British with ships,

would Russia now rule the globe by conquering the heavens?

On the 50th anniversary of the Sputnik launch, John Noble Wilford of the New York Times

wrote,

The beep beep beep of Sputnik was heard round the world.

It was the sound of wonder and foreboding.

Nothing would ever be quite the same again, in geopolitics and science and technology,

in everyday life and the capacity of the human species.

The Soviet Union had launched the first artificial satellite, a new moon on October 4, 1957,

climbing out of the terrestrial gravity well rising above the atmosphere and into orbit,

Sputnik crossed the threshold into a new dimension of human experience.

People could now see their kind as spacefarers.

The exploration of space will go ahead, whether we join in it or not, and it is one of the

great adventures of all time.

And no nation which expects to be the leader of other nations can expect to stay behind

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