Captain Future's Log

The Sputnik of October

It is October 4, 1957, after dark in western Pennsylvania. At the end of a long, multi-jointed arm, a green-shaded lamp focuses light on the surface of the heavy, dark-grained wood desk, a hand-me-down undoubtedly older than I am. The rest of my room is in shadow.

I often had my radio on while I did my homework—a “short-wave” set with a slate gray face and exposed, glowing tubes in the back, that sat on the bookshelf above and to the right of my desk, next to the globe. My father had put the radio together from a kit, and despite its impressive dials it seldom pulled in more than the local AM station. But for some reason the radio is off. I am absorbed in my homework, or maybe the story I am writing in my brown school notebook, a tale of alien invasion called “The Desert Menace.” I’m not even noticing the hum and murmur of the television set on the other side of the far wall, in the living room, where my parents are watching. They’ll call me when it’s time for “The Life of Riley.” I am safe in my room.

So when my bedroom door flies open I am startled. My father leans in, asks if I’d been listening to the radio. I say “no” defensively, but he isn’t checking on my homework diligence. He tells me the Russians have launched a satellite into space. It’s orbiting the earth right now. It’s over the United States. They just announced it on television, and broadcast the actual sounds coming from the satellite. It’s called Sputnik.

When he leaves and shuts the door again, I turn on my radio. Eventually I hear the eerie, even- toned beeping sounds from space. I am shocked. Fascinated by anything about space, I was always looking for news about the satellite the U.S. was planning to rocket into orbit as part of the International Geophysical Year-- this year, 1957. I’d even heard one of the smartest men in America, the quiz show champion Charles van Doren, talk about it on a television documentary about the IGY. The newsman asked him if the Russians might orbit a satellite first. He just chuckled.

So as I sit there in the pool of light surrounded by darkness, listening to the grim monotone from above, I open my brown notebook and write down my thoughts.

"The Russians, Conquerors of Space. Oct.4, 1957. I have just heard some news which will affect my whole future. Russia has just successfully launched the first man-made satellite into space…How did the Russians do it? Out of their own ingenuity? Did they get information from a spy in America? A traitor? All the work our scientists and top brains did, what for? Will the Russians take advantage of this and use it to start a war?"

I am eleven years old. So is Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. Steven Speilberg will turn 11 in a couple of months. George Lucas is 13.

I was living at the edge of a small town in western Pennsylvania. Clinton was growing up in a poor family in Arkansas, Bush in a rich one somewhere (Connecticut?) Speilberg and his family had just moved to suburban Phoenix from New Jersey. Lucas was in Modesto, a town in central California. But Sputnik was orbiting over all of us, and would change all of our lives. We were at the leading edge of the baby boom. There were a lot of us, and there would be a lot more. We were the children of the future. And the future just got real.

Oct. 4, 1957 changed our lives, though in some ways it simply gave new impetus to the prevailing Cold War paranoia. The Blacklist was already in force, and the fear of the Russians had already led to the first alien invasion and bug-eyed monster movies, expressing the new fear of sudden apocalypse from atomic bombs. We knew that one atomic bomb could destroy a city, and one hydrogen bomb was many times more powerful. Until then, the nightmare was a wave of bombers, a Pearl Harbor over Pittsburgh. But if the Soviets had missiles that could orbit a satellite, they could reach the U.S. And within days the world would learn that Soviet rockets could carry a very large payload. Large enough to carry nuclear bombs. So now apocalypse would arrive in rockets, and by the time we heard them we'd be toast. What made this even scarier was that U.S. leaders were clearly surprised. Shocked, in fact.

So there was even more paranoia, and many more monsters from space, and other sudden terrors in the Saturday double features. But there were other outcomes of that day in October 1957, not all of them so drenched in doom. Suddenly the country woke up to a “crisis in education.” The clamor in the newspaper, magazines and on TV was for “more science in the schools.” (So everyone who was a kid in these years immediately got the joke when the late 1960s comedy group the Firesign Theatre recorded a parody of Archie and Jughead comics about two rival high schools, “Communist Martyrs High School” and “More Science High.”)

This insistence on getting serious resulted partly in attempts to tighten the organization man grip, and additional fears of “juvenile delinquency” and the dangers of rock & roll music, which helped build up the pressure that got released in the 60s. But it also made being smart maybe not such a bad thing, and kids with a desire for knowledge got a little more leeway, even in Catholic schools. We were allowed---we were required---to value intelligence, science and critical thinking.

Perhaps the best outcome from my point of view was that the very next year, 1958, Congress passed the National Defense Education Act which earmarked millions of dollars for loans to college students. Colleges were especially feeling the pressure to make sure America had the brainpower to win the Cold War.

Neither of my parents had gone to college, and even with scholarships, they would be hard-pressed to send me. But now I could make up the difference in loans. So thanks to Sputnik, in the fall of 1964, I went off to college.