Mike's On the Porch

I am younger than Sputnik, so I either have to just make stuff up (which I can do), or do some homework (which is not appealing at this hour), or go off on some tangent.

Well . . . . I think we can see where this is headed.

Sputnik, eh? So how far does a Sputnik go?

I went to school with a guy named Spuddy. Spuddy Weigel. It's like Sputnik, only it's Spuddy. Spuddy was a distance runner on the track team. I think he also hurled something - trackwise, I mean. Spuddy ran the two mile race and so did Arve. Arve Levang. He was an exchange student from Norway which is pretty close to Russia, I think.

That's what I remember about Sputnik.

It was fifty years ago today...

Happy birthday to the Space Age, fifty years old today. On a personal note, I was old enough that I could have remembered when Sputnik launched. But, like many kids growing up in the '50's and early '60's, I lived a kind of sheltered life. What I really remember, what got me interested in rocketry and space travel, was Alan Shepard's suborbital flight in May of 1961.

For a couple of Sputnik 50th anniversary articles, try these links...
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/features.cfm?feature=1487
and...
http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/50th-sputnik-timline-2007.html