Sixty seven years ago, on this day, October 4th, 1957,
1957 – Space Race: Launch of Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite to orbit the Earth. Science budget up etc
Science Budget through the roof
Onion Our Dumb Century
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 314ppm. As of 2024 it is 422ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that at the end of World War Two, there had been an unseemly scramble between the Soviets and the Americans as to who could hoover up more and better German rocket scientists. And the Americans probably thought they were on their way; the Nazis had their reputations cleansed as part of Operation Paperclip. The Soviets didn’t have to bother with PR quite so much – one advantage of the Stalinist dictatorship. And then on the fourth of October, everyone got to take them by surprise, because a small metal ball was launched into space Beep, beep beep.
What we learn what/why this matters, The broader context was that the International Geophysical Year was happening. The Americans had kind of assumed that they were going to get the first satellite into space and start taking measurements of stuff. Their self-image was badly dented. They started throwing serious money at science education and the President’s Scientific Advisory Council was created and that had important implications. It was an important venue for Roger Revelle in 1964, when he was writing about environmental pollution.
What happened next, the Americans continued freaking out about control of space. And also weather modification is a major part of the story in money getting allocated to research that, ironically, would show that weather modification, deliberate weather modification, was not so easy. And inadvertent weather modification was happening all along. But then they’d already been told that by Gilbert Plass in 1953, and had decided not to listen to him, I guess…
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
Also on this day:
October 4, 1978 – the Interdepartmental group on Climatology meets for the first time…