It wasn’t the lead story I was expecting for this anniversary but after five decades of speak no astronaut, hear no astronaut and see no astronaut, this is quite a seismic shift for the UK even if other natoins are wondering, “what took you so long?”
It reminds me of a story one of my German university friends told me about the German philosopher who was asked by his students, if it was the end of the world what would you do? The philospher said, “Go to England.” Bewildered his students asked, “why?” The philospher answered, “because everything there happens 100 years later.”
Well its fifty years in this case but you get the idea. You can find my own theories about why there has been this sudden change here.
Anyway, on to more important things, what is out there in the blogosphere on this auspicious day?
The European Space Agency has its own take on Sputnik’s birthday
NASA took has its own Sputnik special
Sadly the English language section of the Russian Federal Space Agency’s website has nothing on Sputnik and neither does the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s English web pages.
Hobbyspace.com’s spacetransportnews.com has more excellent links as always
MSNBC reports NASA administrator Michael Griffin’s comments that China will likely beat the US back to the Moon with a manned mission. Such comments don’t instill a huge amount of confidence in NASA’s current efforts or maybe it is a scare tactic to get Congress to give them some more money as the agency’s budget is now stuck back in a continuing resolution with only 2006 funding levels.
