Fifty years ago today, the Soviet Union launched into orbit Sputnik, the first artificial satellite, marking the beginning of the space age. The National Space Society's Huntsville chapter HAL5 hosted a special presentation at the library this evening called Reminiscences of Sputnik.

I'm fortunate to be living in Huntsville, the birthplace of the U.S. space program. German engineers were brought here under Operation Paperclip to form the rocket program that would eventually become NASA. Most of those engineers are dead, but some are still living here and are kind enough to speak to the younger generation.

The guest speakers were: Dr. Ernst Stuhlinger (93), German, who completed his dissertation at my age (23) under Dr. Geiger (of the Geiger counter), became the director of MSFC's space science lab, and built the Explorer 1 rocket in his garage; Konrad Dannenberg (95), German, who worked on the V-2, Redstone, Jupiter, and Saturn rocket programs; and David Christensen, American, who worked as a NASA rocket engineer around the same time, and who took up the panel role as a NASA historian.

The younger generation just so happened to be a packed roomful of middle aged to retiree-aged people. There were only a handful of people under 40-years-old, and I stood out among them as one of the only young females. This made some of the older audience members around me very chatty, wanting to know who I was and why I was there, and to share their own experiences with me. I'm surprised and disappointed that so many of the space-enthusiasts of my generation don't take advantage of presentations by these men before they're all gone, but I'm grateful I was given the opportunity.

Each panel member talked about where they were when they heard that Sputnik-1 had been launched, and how that affected them and those around them. The general theme was, at first, the engineers in the U.S. were angry and frustrated because we could have been the first to launch a satellite, but the lack of political interest delayed progress. But a few months later, when the U.S. launched our first satellite, Explorer 1 (which orbited for 12 years!), the feeling was great gratitude for Sputnik, because it provided the political motivation to jump-start our space program. The modern-day comparison is the space-race with China. Once Chinese taikonauts land on the Moon before American astronauts return (which they will), the U.S. may be motivated to regain our space "superiority". Right now, NASA is so under-funded, that even when we return to the Moon, we have pretty much no budget to do anything on the Moon, which defeats the purpose of returning.

I gathered up some National Space Society and HAL5 literature (and a NASA pin!) after the talk so I can join both the national society and the local chapter. I won't have any involvement until after the comprehensive exam, but at the end of January, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the launching of Explorer 1, they will be bringing some old Soviet rocket engineers here to talk – so cool!