That’s how many exoplanets that have been discovered. All in 13 short years. To think that one day we will visit them.
Oh, and as COD reminded me, yesterday was the anniversary of the launch of the Apollo 11 mission.
That’s how many exoplanets that have been discovered. All in 13 short years. To think that one day we will visit them.
Oh, and as COD reminded me, yesterday was the anniversary of the launch of the Apollo 11 mission.
I was still in grade school when sputnik was launched. I kept a scrap book of every launch and attempt. It broadcast on the same band as a lot of automatic garage doors, opening doors all across the country as it passed over.
I remember the spectacular pictures of the Vanguard blowing up on its pad. I think the first actual satellite that we put in orbit was the Jupiter C.
My God! I’m a geezer!
I’m another geezer and I didn’t remember that Sputnik opened garage doors so I did a bit of research. Found this on alt.folklore.urban:
“The 20MHz frequency of Sputnik was not used for things like garage door openers, which probably used the 27MHz frequency band (the same one used by CB in later years). That band was allocated by the FCC for low-power devices (under 100 milliwatt), including remote controls, and cheap toy walkie-talkies. It continued to be used for walkie talkies after CB became big, but other remote-controlled devices were moved off this band up into the VHF frequencies after the CB craze hit.”
I don’t think there were very many automatic garage door openers in the 50s either. Most of the ones I remember at the few rich folk homes that I knew had a hard wired switch at the entrance to the driveway and weren’t true remotes. I found this on Genie’s website: “In May 1954, the Alliance Manufacturing Company first produced its own garage door opener unit. Genie was the first mass-produced, radio-controlled residential garage door opener, becoming the market leader in design, safety and reliable service – core values Genie garage door openers still upholds to this day. ”
There was a design flaw with the first RF automatic door in that they all worked on the same frequency so you could open all of the doors on your block at the same time. People who didn’t understand this might have assumed that sputnik was doing it. The sputnik signal wasn’t really very strong.
There are reports of garage doors being activated by low flying aircraft but most of these are from the 70s.
I’m pretty sure this is an urban legend. Do you have anything in your scrapbook about it?
I also remember watching the Vanguard explosion on TV (in black and white!). Such a disappointment.
Yeah, I think Ron is right about this one. I doubt Sputnik’s transmitter would have been that powerful. And garage door openers were likely rare in the 50s. Here’s whats on the Snopes message boards.
On a related note, watch this Google Video clip of a recent, spectacular rocket explosion.
There were tv news stories as I remember. Pictures of a neighborhood and and a voice over describing the problem. It could very well be a false story, we didn’t do much questioning of news stories in those days.
There was a fair amount of panic. The Russians pretty much demonstrated that we were asleep at the switch. There was a rush to put all kinds of related material on the air.
There were several competing programs to match the Russians and they weren’t playing well together. The Vanguard was a Navy program and the Jupiter C program was an Army program (if I remember correctly). The money was split all over the place with no coordination to speak of.
They did the Vanguard explosion in News Reals at the movies too. Pretty spectacular.