.Jhihmoac

gallery

...Just another routine evening, and the SAC radio analyst had just donned his headset, signifying the start of his watch...Expecting nothing more than the normal bric-a-brac, he settled down into his seat...

...About an hour into his assigned duty, he picked up something different...Something out of the ordinary feedback he had been trained to zero in on...A sucession of repititious beeps, as steady and as regular as clockwork...He raised his eyes and looked around the cubicle for his commanding officer...This had to be kept quiet until others could determine the situation..."

All this hype lately about the 40th anniversary of the first moon walk, probes intentionally crashing into the lunar surface and finding water, and the latest tests on the Ares rocket got me thinking of another time back in the Fall of 1957, when a new threat was discovered in a steady orbit around the Earth...thus starting a frenzy (and somewhat of a panic) that became known as the "Space Race"...