If you are in Kansas City, come to the Linda Hall Library of Science Engineering and Technology, for viewing stars (and maybe satellites!), listening to ham radios and learning about the early days of the space age, on October 4th. This event is free and open to the public. (6:30-9:00pm).

Sent by Sabina Marsh | 6:14 PM ET | 10-01-2007

I always wondered why Daniel sounds so anti Bush if not anti American all the time. Today I got my answer, he's still a "Soviet Sputnik". He so proudly told his story on how he got that title from Soviet president at that time.

I'm surprised he did not start with: "Gavari Moskva, radio stancie Sovietskega Soyuza".

I lived under communist regime for 30 years now under American liberalism. Oh my.

Sent by Rafael Skodlar | 2:15 AM ET | 10-02-2007

Well, then Sabina, you know the story of Robert Goddard in Roswell, I'm sure. If you're ever in Roswell, come visit the Goddard Planetarium and the museum where Goddard's rocket assembly machine shop is set up just like it was way back when in the day.

This blog site is spending significant time on the Blackwater covert war situation. Which makes this story about Sputnik and the rocket science progam an excellent place to tell a very real story about the visual invention of outer space in the American mindscape. Remember I told you all that if you want to know the journalistic truth, first, get into really good fiction.

So, gather round all you X-Files and Area 51 and James Bond type Blackwater fans. Because I'm going to tell you about not only the UFO capital of the world, I'm going to tell you about the very roots of the American rocketry and space race program and the birth of the atomic bomb and other nifty pieces of true fiction.

Yes, I'm going to tell you about Roswell. The truth, and the fiction that is even more than truth. Cause I've been here in Roswell since May. I'm remodeling myself a farm house. And for everybody who has wondered about who and what Roswell is, here's your chance to learn a little more. The truth is out there. If you can handle it.

Okay, I have to do this in serialized form. Because this is a fairly long story. The truth is usually longer than the subterfuge. What I'll do is set the stage. So you can decide if you really want to know about Roswell.

To my right, about ten minutes drive, is Roswell Airfield. It used to be called Walker Air Force Base. A B-29 airfield onto which Colonel Paul Tibbets parked his special little aircraft, "The Enola Gay,"before heading on off to Hiroshima. Down the road a couple hours drive is Alamogordo, where Oppenheimer and his boys detonated the world's first atomic bomb (that we know of being the first).

To my left, down the other direction, is a very large farm where Charles Lindbergh and some of the Guggenheim family came to watch Robert Goddard send his personally fashioned rockets up into the New Mexican clear and unpopulated skies.

I'll tell a little more tomorrow. In the meantime, if you go into the Roswell city government web site link you will hear the eerie, theremin induced white noise theme song to the X-Files television series. The mayor of Roswell owns one of the city's larger funeral parlors.

The cemetery here in Roswell is named South Park.

The two Roswell golf courses are popular venues for CIA operatives returning from the mysterious desert and the even more mysterious Area 51 (wink, wink). More later.

Remember, the truth is out there. It is big. And the antiwar movment.org people just may not be able to deal with it.

City of Roswell, NM City Government
www.roswell-nm.gov/

fred call

Sent by fred call | 10:29 AM ET | 10-02-2007

There was a proffessor at MSU or U of M, named Spencer who was to my knowledge still living in Western Wyoming, just off I-80, one of those Salt Lake bedroom communitys, who told me first hand he deciphered a communique
about Sputnik several months before its launch. He told me congress did receive it but they either didn't bother to read it, or paid no attention to it! Ike always said he could have launched something with Von Braun out of Redstone arsenal back in '54, but didn't want to start a space race. I think they just needed something to spin up ' New Math' and the IGY for all the new government Research Scientists etc. New Math was just a hype!

Sent by jim richard | 4:21 PM ET | 10-02-2007

Most Americans, apparently including Daniel Schorr, are not aware of the original meaning of the Russian word "sputnik". It means "traveling companion" ("s" = with, "put" = road, and "nik" = person with said attributes). So, since a satellite is Earth's "traveling companion", the word was adopted for an orbiting object. To Khrushchev, the joke was in the dual use of the word, since Mr. Schorr had become Krushchev's traveling companion.

Sent by Philip Murphy | 9:05 AM ET | 10-03-2007

www.fletcexpress.com/
The Federal Law Enforcement Recreation Association, Inc.
The FLETC EXPRESS STORE carries top quality merchandise from various agencies that train at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center.
**Only official U.S. Federal Law Enforcement Agents and Officers may purchase items from this site. Items purchased from this site must be shipped to your agency address. At no time will any order be shipped to any residence or non agency addresses.

If you happen to be covertly training at the Roswell FLETC site, you can order your sunglasses and golf shirts and have them sent to your address in Roswell. In downtown Roswell, you can go with your favorite CIA agent friend to visit the very popular International UFO Museum, and buy an Area 51 license plate and T-shirt proclaiming Roswell to not only be the UFO capital of the world, but the birthplace of the American space program.

It's not at all unusual to witness a non-descript looking 747 come barreling onto the runway of Roswell Air Field, and maybe a dozen guys in sunglasses will deplane. With their golf bags. Contrary to popular myth, I've noticed that when they come to Roswell, they usually aren't wearing black. Polo shirts and shorts is more the attire.

Typically, after a morning round of relaxing golf, the well tanned, sunglass wearing, smiling group will board a helicopter of a light plane and head out somewhere into the desert. You don't try to follow. An Apache Attack Helicopter will riddle your jeep with plenty of .50 caliber rounds. In a day or two, the fellows will return, play another round of golf, then reboard the insignia-less 747 to zoom off into the distance. Wherever that distance might be.

The American space race all kind of began when Robert Goddard started a small forest fire in the Boston suburbs, back in 1929.

"A spectacular launch took place on July 17, 1929, when he flew the first instrumented payload - an aneroid barometer, a thermometer, and a camera (to record the readings). It was the first instrument-carrying rocket. The launch failed; after rising about 90 feet the rocket turned and struck the ground 171 feet away. It caused such a fire that neighbors complained to the state fire marshal and Goddard was prohibited from making further tests in Massachusetts. Fortunately, Charles A. Lindbergh, fresh from his transatlantic solo flight, became interested in Goddard's work. He visited Goddard and was sufficiently impressed to persuade Daniel Guggenheim, a philanthropist, to award Goddard a grant of $50,000. With this, Goddard set up an experiment station in a lonely spot near Roswell, New Mexico."

fred call

Sent by fred call | 10:18 AM ET | 10-03-2007

The development of the RD-105/RD-106 rocket motors that powered the R-7 ICBM that launched Sputnik traces its evolution back to Robert Goddard's rocket experimentation on a ranch outside of Roswell, New Mexico.

Okay X-Files and James Bond and Blackwater fans, some more fictive truths about Roswell and Area 51.

In the 1930s, Robert Goddard was regularly launching rockets into the skies of Roswell, New Mexico. Up until 1939, then Sturnbannfuhrer Werner Von Braun would contact Goddard directly to ask questions about rocket science. After 1939, Von Braun was relegated to reading Goddard's published science journals to complete the development of the V-2 rocket, at Peenemende.

The Russians took their captured Von Braun plans of the V-2 and V-1 rockets to further evolve Russian rocket science into the R-7 ICBM that launched the Sputnik.

On another note along the lines similar to that of private security firms: A private security firm patrolling the grounds of Area 51 is authorized to shoot to kill. You might wonder why a private firm is needed to secure a military installation. Keep wondering. Except Area 51 isn't near Roswell, New Mexico. It's in Nevada. President Bill Clinton signed an executive order stating that no one in Area 51 has to answer questions to anybody. President George Bush reviewed and put his approval on that very order.

It's generally believed that the U2 spy plane that pilot Francis Gary Powers crash landed inside Russia was developed in Area 51.

But let's all be real about this whole issue of Sputnik to Blackwater. What you don't know is a lot, lot, lot more than what you do know about the black box of the space program and private security firms and covert operations. And a lot more than you will ever know. And be happy that you don't need to know more.

And that's my serialized story about Sputnik and Roswell and James Bond and Blackwater. Thanks for reading. And sleep tight. It's all for your own good.

"I wouldn't worry about Area 51. If I were you, I'd go looking for Areas One through Fifty, and leave it alone at that." A famous warning sign posted in the Nevada desert.

fred call

PS:The famous Roswell UFO incident occurred in 1947, some two years after Robert Goddard's death. Some say Werner Von Braun was in the general vicinity when the mysterious disc crashed onto the New Mexican desert. If you are near Roswell in any July, stop on by for the annual Roswell UFO Festival. George Noory was here this last summer. So was the Lone Gunman actor from X-Files. They were cool people to talk to.

And, yes, Roswell is a designated FLETC site, and of the International Law Enforcement Academy, as well as the United States Border Patrol Training Academy and the New Mexico Military Institute where Roger Staubach played a year of ball before going to Annapolis. And Walker Air Force Base was at one time the headquarters of the Strategic Air Command. And actress Demi Moore went to Goddard High School.

Sent by fred call | 9:01 PM ET | 10-03-2007

I'm Scott Curtis, Head of Reference Services at Linda Hall Library in Kansas City, Missouri. If you will be in Kansas City this evening, consider coming to our Sputnik night event!

This evening is Sputnik Night at Linda Hall Library, from 6:30-8:30 pm. We have many activities planned, and I hope that you are able to attend for some time this evening.

--The Kansas City Astronomy Club will set up telescopes on the roof of the Annex and scan the skies for satellites, planets, and other wonders of the heavens.

--The Blue Springs Ham Radio Club and other local hams will demonstrate amateur radio, play satellite sounds recorded by ham radio operators, and will show how some hams still listen to satellites as they did on Sputnik night and during the early years of the Space Age.

--Issac Newton thought about putting an artificial satellite into orbit using a cannon. Could this be done with a catapult? A table-top demonstration of a trebuchet, a type of catapult, will be used to demonstrate the physics of trajectory and gravitational forces.

--Local NASA science ambassadors will demonstrate fundamental forces involved in orbit.

--There will be gallery talks for our exhibit "The Year the Space Age Began"

Sent by Scott Curtis | 11:06 AM ET | 10-04-2007

I'm 13, almost 14, and it may sound weird for someone young like me to say this but I really appreciate this. I'm doing a history fair project on The Cold War and Sputnik's affect on the world. There's not alot of stuff that can actually help me with the stuff I need answered but this just answered like 3 :]

Sent by Kokomo | 5:23 PM ET | 12-14-2007