On Sputnik, the space race, 'when science suddenly mattered' and whether it ever will again
Next week marks the 50th anniversary of the launch of Sputnik 1, the Soviet satellite that shocked America into a cold war battle for space supremacy. Already, the news media are examining the anniversary from all angles. I typed "sputnik" into A Google News' search engine and retrieved 327 articles and blog posts. Expect to read even more about Sputnik 1 (pictured) and the golden anniversary this weekend.
Several of the articles I skimmed look back at the Sputnik launch on Oct. 4, 1957, as a pivotal moment in U.S. history, perhaps as defining a moment for the space race as Pearl Harbor was for U.S. involvement in World War II.
The fact that the Soviets beat us into space was a blow to our collective ego. But it -- as Pearl Harbor 16 years earlier -- was a clarion call for us to get our act together and rally around the cause of beating our cold war adversaries to the moon. It was, as The New York Times puts it, a time When Science Suddenly Mattered, in Space and in Class. Times reporter Cornelia Dean writes:
For many, Sputnik was proof that American education, particularly in science, had fallen behind. Scientists and engineers warned Congress that the cold war was being fought with slide rules, not rifles. In response Congress passed the National Defense Education Act in 1958, providing, among other things, college scholarships and other help for aspiring scientists, engineers and mathematicians. Meanwhile, some of the nation’s eminent scientists were collaborating on new ways to teach high school physics, biology and chemistry.
These days, the cold war is ancient history, the U.S. is not investing in science and technology as it should, and the head of NASA thinks China will be on the moon before we ever return. But if the 50th anniversary of Sputnik 1 teaches us anything, it is that, given the right cause, vision and national leadership, we can pull together and achieve something great.
The question is, What should that cause be?
Global competitiveness? That's been on the minds of many, even before the days of Tom Friedman's book The World Is Flat came out a couple of years ago. That was the subject of our alumni magazine's Summer 2006 issue. It's also something Chancellor John F. Carney III, himself a beneficiary of the federal government's post-Sputnik investment in engineering, believes matters. As he discussed with alumni in the Fall 2005 issue of our magazine, campuses like UMR, working with pre-college educators, along with scientists and engineers from the private and government sectors, should work to spark more interest in science and engineering. “We’ve got to start getting more young people interested in science and mathematics, and I think that’s got to be a top priority for our country,” Carney said in that UMR Magazine article. “The United States is in an educational crisis, and too many high school students can’t even think of going to a university like UMR because they’ve made the wrong choices in high school. Schools like UMR and WPI have to take a proactive role in interacting with the elementary and high schools to stress the importance of technological education.”
Maybe the grand cause should be the environment, or energy (again, the subject of a previous issue of UMR Magazine), or some combination of the two, such as moving the United States into a post-fossil fuel economy. Sound like a stretch? Maybe so. But if we could put a man on the moon, why not give one of these important causes a shot?
What do you think? What cause should light this country's fire and get engineering and science back on track?
P.S. The reason I'm able to link to so many of our magazine articles here is because of resident techie Mindy Limback, who took it upon herself to redesign the magazine website into a weblog format, and did a great job with it.