Joe B. writes – “The meaning of ‘sputnik’ in Russian is ‘fellow-traveler’.”
From the comments;
I remember sputnik. I was about 4 years old, and my older brother took us outside to try and watch it pass overhead. I don’t remember actually seeing it, but a lot of people did keep an eye on it. Obama is right about it being a sputnik moment, but not in the way he perceives it. Sputnik scared the living daylights out of the general public, because no one was certain the commies wouldn’t load a bunch of them up with nukes. If they actually had developed the technology to that level, the west would have been seriously screwed. All the leaders of the day were old war horses, with no fear of launching an attack.
The current sputnik moment happened when the west realized we’ve allowed the commies to take control of the world economy. This might not frighten people as much as the threat of nuclear destruction, but it should. Death from a nuclear explosion is mostly quick and painless, while death from economic domination will be slow and torturous. Our society will not tolerate it, and the only way out will be war. So, instead of a quick and clean fight, with a slim chance of survival, we have a long drawn out prelude of painful economic decay, followed by a war with no chance of survival.
Heh. “Is it any coincidence that the acronym for Winning The Future is WTF?”
“This is our generation’s Credit Card Limit moment.”
Now that is more truthful. The CBO just announced the current fiscal deficit will be north of $1.5 Trillion.
In Obama’s budget plan it is supposed to be near $900 billion.
Obama . . . the Mstercard Presidency
No surprise that he put in context of the Russian achievement, not the American response to it.
Obama is an ignorant jerk. For many reasons. One of
them is his indifference to fact. Oh yes, it is true that NASA was founded in 1958,
but it was mainly a reorganisation and expansion of NACA, which dated to 1915,
and which by 1958 was heavily involved in aeronautical research.
Maybe young Barach didn’t get Star trek episodes while growing up in Kenya. Let’s see, they let was Uhura, Sulu, Checkov, Scotty & even Spock on the bridge – but no Achmed !
DOH! I was supposed to preface my comment with a quote from the link that stated:
“Instead of focusing on space, the Obama Administrtation’s NASA plan was to reach out to the Muslim world.”
Then why did Obama switch the focus of NASA from space engineering to ‘outreach to Muslims’?
And if he is opposed to the US dependency on mideast oil, then, why is he refusing to allow offshore drilling in the US Gulf Coast and drilling in other parts of the country for national sources of oil?
And why is he opposed to nuclear energy sources?
And why does he support cap-and-trade, which has nothing to do with new energy innovation but is merely a money-laundering tactic to tax industries.
And does he have a clue about other sources of energy – which are years away from functionality?
Neil Armstrong took a lot of flak over the years for refusing to attend presentations, conferences, anniversaries etc. of the moon landing. according to the critics he ‘owed’ it to the masses.
Neil Armstrong didn’t owe anybody a damned thing.
the entire WORLD owes Neil Armstrong a unpayable debt of gratitude for showing what is accomplished when those involved are steeped in a ‘team effort’ attitude. I also find it exceedingly noteworthy that Neil was always a civilian, unlike the pioneering astronauts drawn from the military.
I also ‘get it’ about the controversy surround exactly what it was he said about ‘one small step’. here’s my spin on it:
what I heard: ‘one small step for man…’.
official version: ‘one small step for A man…’
I thought about this a long time. what I came up with is the fact that the ‘a’ that Neil omitted pointed the focus on him, i.e. he is the ‘a man’ being referred to. well that wasn’t his style, so he changed the script to ‘man’. in other words, that was a small step for a typical human being. (not necessarily himself), as compared to the gian leaps that ‘mankind’ has achieved over the centuries.
Neil Armstrong correctly refused to bring focus on himself. this is what I remember about him and yes, I did stay up that night watching the live broadcast at 3 o’clock in the morning.
bravo and thank you Neil Armstrong.
“And does he have a clue about other sources of energy – which are years away from functionality?”
Now more than ever, I believe obama is heavily medicated. There is absolutely no logic to his administration. He obviously was too stoned to proof read the speech written for him by a 29 year old comic book writer. He could not have penned one word of that speech…………. he hasn’t a clue.
Too bad we don’t have another “Albert 11” moment.
Then why did Obama switch the focus of NASA from space engineering to ‘outreach to Muslims’?
Well, we already know we can reach space…
Maybe the correlation between Sputnik and the times we live in is that Putin puts Russia ahead of the U.S.A. because he’s a better leader than Obama is and the U.S. needs to “catch up” there by getting a better president.
Hey isn’t one of the major purposes of the new, unfunded NASA to “Make Muslims Feel Better” about their long-standing technological incompetence?
Maybe that would work for Americans, too.
I think Barry is giving America its “quisling” moment.
beagle- Neil Armstrong was actually a Naval Officer with combat experience in Korea. But no matter, most of your comments about him were accurate. The west does owe him a debt of gratitude. Chuck Yeager didn’t like him very much, and made it fairly plain in his book. He wasn’t supposed to be first out of the capsule, but pulled rank at the last minute. Even heroes have egos.
I remember sputnik. I was about 4 years old, and my older brother took us outside to try and watch it pass overhead. I don’t remember actually seeing it, but a lot of people did keep an eye on it. Obama is right about it being a sputnik moment, but not in the way he perceives it. Sputnik scared the living daylights out of the general public, because no one was certain the commies wouldn’t load a bunch of them up with nukes. If they actually had developed the technology to that level, the west would have been seriously screwed. All the leaders of the day were old war horses, with no fear of launching an attack.
The current sputnik moment happened when the west realized we’ve allowed the commies to take control of the world economy. This might not frighten people as much as the threat of nuclear destruction, but it should. Death from a nuclear explosion is mostly quick and painless, while death from economic domination will be slow and torturous. Our society will not tolerate it, and
the only way out will be war. So, instead of a quick and clean fight, with a slim chance of survival, we have a long drawn out prelude of painful economic decay, followed by a war with no chance of survival.
Obama was obviously not born yet when Sputnik was launched and the space race began. The Soviets “won” the space race because their program was dangerous and careless — they were willing to sacrifice and risk Russian lives rather than wait until the technology was properly tested.
Obama is typical of a generation that has been raised on a very limited understanding of history. And he is producing an even worse generation of uncritical buffons.
Case in point:
Sitting in the library yesterday at the next table was a (White) father helping his young daughter with her homework on “Black history month” (why we have an entire month in Canada dedicated to “Black History” when it is not remotely as significant to us as in the U.S. is another topic). Anyway, the central topic for the liberating force in “Black History” was Barack Obama! Imagine that, not only is Obama not a central figure for Black liberation in the U.S., but what the hell does he have to do with Canadian Blacks in our history???
Where is this revisionist didactical material coming from, and how did it get into our Canadian education system? Obama hasn’t even finished a single term in the U.S., we don’t yet know what history will write about him, and we already have inserted him into Canadian history?
Why is Obama doing…
Most succint answer, because he’s an idiot. Worst of all, he’s an idiot with one half of a launch key.
Ricardo..One thing that you must understand is that Barry S is a man ahead of his time. Why else do you think he was awarded the Nobel Peace prize so soon after being sworn in. Not for what he hadn`t acomplished till that time, but for what he will.And as for Canadian blacks and Barry? Ah heck I got nothing.
Sputnik crashed to earth in four months. Is that bambam’s grand design?
Well then, if it’s the fifties all over again …
“You’ll wonder where Obama went
when Sarah is the president.”
ET, the answer to many of your questions is simply this. Western society has become completely risk averse. When I say ‘risk’ I mean perceived risk rather than actual or statistical risk. Nuclear power is perceived to be dangerous, irrespective of the actual statistics that show it safer than literally anything else including wind. Space travel is now perceived to be dangerous, hence the end of the shuttle program with no US replacement. After Horizon, Gulf Coast oil drilling is now perceived to have high environmental risk.
Much of the insanity of government policy can be interpreted as avoiding perceived risk. This is openly fostered by the MSM. Given the media’s general ignorance about science and technology, the only way the media can focus on these topics is on the basis of perceived risk. Any time the media moves away from perceived risk their comprehension level drops to zero.
So, they foster public fear, because it’s the only thing they know how to do.
Yeah I can remember Sputnik, Muttnik, Yuri Gagarin…..
We had read about the US Vanguard programme to launch as missile but then unannounced the Soviets succeeded in orbiting a tiny beeper.
Soviet space technology was basically devoted to creat ICBMs. Their technology lacked the ability to miniturise nuclear weapons so they were forced to create boosters that had the “throw weight” of a MACK truck. Their front line military aircraft featured thermionic tubes—-like our 1930’s radios—no transisters.
It is suspected they killed many “cosmonauts” in failed attempts but a manned moonshot was likely never an option for them.
The US government knew this but the media, then as now disseminated the myth of superior Soviet technology…forcing Kennedy to panic and abandon the succeeding air-launch—manned space programme for the cheap and nasty capsule on an ICBM.
Only after the success of Opollo, did the US return to proceed with the earlier programme which yielded the Space Shuttle. The much heralded Soviet equivalent “Buran” never flew.
Expect Soetoro to announce an initiative to develop “cold fusian”.
I remeber those days so well. In the days when I was in a band, I actually co-wrote a song called “Bring Me The Head of Yuri Gagarin”. We never used it because there already was a song by that name (by Hawkwind; I think ours was better but I’m sure they think the same). The good ones all get used first…
Hey Sasquatch.. I believe that the “Buran” (Snowstorm) did in fact make one unmanned spaceflight in 1988.
There’s nothing like Cold War imagery to try to boost your failing career.
Obama is applying the wrong historical analogy.
We did indeed have our Sputnik moment, but it is not what Obama is referring to, it is 9/11. And Yes, we have poured great amounts of government treasure and blood into responding to that moment and, by and large we are succeeding (though in any war it is hard to tell how we are doing except in hindsight post-victory or loss).
What Obama is declaring a Sputnik moment also has an historical cousin. But it was an internal issue not an international one. It is the economic malaise that began in the Kennedy adminstration and continued right through to about the middle of the Carter administration. That malaise was caused by the US government moving past the inflection point on the LAffer curve both for taxation AND regulation of business. It started when Kennedy made it legal for public sector employees to unionize and this was followed by the great society fiasco of LBJ, Nixon’s creation of the EPA and the energy dept (or was that Carter) and miriad other taxes, and regs that were put in place. Its unwinding didn’t require more government investment and involvement like Sputnik and 9/11 and like Obama insists we need, but less, far less of it.
Carter began the move back down the laffers by introducing deregulation of telecoms and transport and other sectors, Reagan took a meat-axe to unions and taxes and shortly thereafter the economy roared back.
This new malaise has been caused by the compounding costs of the first malaise elements that were not removed – PS unions, welfare state entitlements, closed shop rules, etc. and added issues like the making illegal of redlining during the Carter administration (which begat the Fannie/Freddie debacle) and choke holds on commerce like the over-regulation of markets and environmental stewardship and a failure to rein in torte laws.
True to form Obama has misidentified both the nature of the crisis and its solutions. The GOP needs to point this out LOUDLY, and offer the correct (and winning) solutions. They must not let this Sputnik analogy stand.
Ah, er… y’mean SPUTTER moment”.
Marvin the martian has nothing over these maroons.
Good grief Charlie Brown-noser,Aka Harvard Review comissar in chief.
Gu’s entertaining, I’ll give him that!
Stock up on Ammo, Gold,silver, cause he hasn’t learned anything.
Nixon’s creation of the EPA
Correct.
What we need is an true accurate definition of POLLUTION that both Left and Right can agree on that is realistic.
Nobody wants real pollution.
The Left has to stop with their vitriol about the Right not caring.(Hint: it isn’t the Right that murders babies)
CO2 is not a toxin.
DDT is not a toxin.
Stop the fearmongering from the Left and let us get down to fixing what is broken and let’s stop wasting time and energy fighting about fixing what ISN’T broken.
This theme is a ripoff of the Michigan governor’s (can’t remember name) from five years ago when the governor said the state needed a ‘moonshot’ of innovation to get the state going again.
Much of the language was the same.
Five years on, Michigan’s unemployment rate is even worse than it was back then.
I’m sure some our American friends would remember more details than I do.
Obama lives in his own Universe. All I remember as a kid was people where upset the ‘Russians ” Got there first.
NASA was a Cold war Reaction to the Soviet Star wars program of the day.
To many years of propaganda by NASA proclaiming they where explores, first has obscured its real mission.
JMO
Well, I feel inspired:
I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing Obama on the moon and not returning him safely to the Earth. 😀
While the US of A is being led down the path by the pied piper extolling Russia as an example, the real threat is that giant panda in the passenger seat getting ready to drive.
Happened to catch a commercial today on CNN while waiting in a office. I couldn’t hear it but words like Chinese Culture came on the screen then morphed into a smiling grandgather and son scene. Went through all sorts of Chinese (items) and always showing smiling Chinese scientists, high tech workers, astronaughts and the like. It ended with the words “Think China.” Being as it was the CNN business channel one can assume they can’t get our money fast enough and want the west to invest.
All I remember as a kid was people where upset the ‘Russians ” Got there first.
If I remember rightly the ‘there’ was the concept that rockets could be used to deliver satellite uplinks for global communications instead of just a platform for delivering warheads.
That concept was a big leap in not just battlefield communications but in the ability for spies to transmit information to their controllers/patron states.
(until that time the West had no idea that a Sat-burst-uplink relay could bypass ‘normal’ below-the-horizon communications) and at that time the West thought on the ground microdot transfers and dead-letter-drops + one-day-pad codes were State of the Art intelligence communications.
The West were, of course, wrong and needed to catch up.
The West(U.S.A. and pals) had the rockets, but they didn’t have the spy satellite payloads* that could by-pass surface communication limitations.
*they weren’t even in the design phase because the Soviets were ahead of the thinking curve
I was reading some of the comments and thought I would youtube the Kennedy ‘Put a Man on the Moon’ speech from Rice U in 1962. It is interesting to see this – I’ve never seen it before – and justapose (so to speak).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouRbkBAOGEw
Ask not what this teleprompter can do for you, …
“….long drawn out prelude of painful economic decay, followed by a war with no chance of survival.” — That’s crazy talk
@ Oz
“DDT is not a toxin” – Now that’s real crazy talk
The U.S. putting a man on the moon-for-one-week(or less, who cares?) was a monumental waste of money.
–what has that got to do with the price of TEA in China?
Here we are a half century+ later and where is the pay off for putting a man on the moon?
What we need is for government to exercise the will to solve the problems(and by solve I mean get the hell out of the way of real people who have problems caused by the government and maybe can fix there own corner they live in) that we have here on the Earth and stop making pie-in-the-sky(moon) promises to attempt to distract us for the fact that government IS the problem.
Do I want anarchy?
No.
I want smaller government.
CUT government and CUT services.
Do I want NO government and NO services?
NO. I don’t want anarchy.
But deep cuts are preferable to total collapse and collapse is where we are heading towards.
coach:
thank you for that correction. I now know where the blazes Armstrong perfected his cool-under-fire approach to problem solving like the incident during Gemini 8 I believe it was, when the fine tuning attitude adjustment jets went bonkers and he had to figure out on the fly how to correct the craft’s orientation, all the while fighting the dizzying effects of rolling around like an amusement park ride. all part of some documentary I’ve seen on the moon missions.
@ Oz
“DDT is not a toxin” – Now that’s real crazy talk
I used to live on CFBs in the ’60s where they would spray DDT all over, including on me and my playmates.
I’m over 50 years old and I’ll bet this toxin addled old coot could kick your sorry ass.
Beagle, the incident to which you refer was Apollo 11. The projected landing zone was full of six-foot boulders, and Armstrong had to manually fly over them several hundred feet.
It illustrates why Apollo was a success, the redundancy of having two spacecraft. It’s also why the shuttle has been more problematic: 1. it uses solid fuel, and; 2. it only does the most hazardous part of any space mission, earth to earth orbit and return.
Heard on John Batchelor tonight that the phrase “Sputnik moment” was a term credited to Thomas L. Friedman. Maybe he’s writing for BO now.
set you free — This theme is a ripoff of the Michigan governor’s (can’t remember name) from five years ago
that would be Jennifer Granholm, final answer.
“It illustrates why Apollo was a success, the redundancy of having two spacecraft.”
Huh? How does flying over 6-foot boulders say anything about 2 spacecraft?
“It’s also why the shuttle has been more problematic: 1. it uses solid fuel, and; 2. it only does the most hazardous part of any space mission, earth to earth orbit and return.”
Um.
1. The solid fuel boosters haven’t caused any issues. One disasater was caused by a leaking gasket, the other by damaged heat shielding.
2. Yeah, it just goes up and down without doing anything in between. Sure.
Twilight moment:
Obambam on the moon.
There he is, the illegal in chief, in full lectureing mode.
Budda-like, his eyes closed, two fingers touching his temple.
Pursed lips, he crafts his words.(oh the depths of thought…)conjuring an image in order to best convey his vision.
His message to a polite audience …………..of moon rocks (WILSON!)
We are so blessed, the legend in his own mind….
“Here we are a half century+ later and where is the pay off for putting a man on the moon?”
Wonderfully shortsighted. Please remind us, Oz of what the long term payoff was of Columbus’s voyage in 1492. The investment is only wasted if people like you make sure that nothing ever comes of it.
Alex: without two spacecraft, Apollo 13 would have been lost. Without a specially designed spacecraft for the moon, a spacecraft designed for earth re-entry would have had too much mass to be as maneuverable as the Apollo 11 moon lander.
Yes, solid fuel boosters have always been an issue. Once ignited they can’t be turned off. This was a major design deficiency identified in the Challenger post mortem.