{"id":751,"date":"2021-01-06T00:51:10","date_gmt":"2021-01-06T00:51:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kohette.com\/wpthemes\/literatum\/?p=751"},"modified":"2021-01-06T01:41:56","modified_gmt":"2021-01-06T01:41:56","slug":"how-dreams-of-spacefaring-zombies-led-to-the-launch-of-sputnik-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rafaelmartin.is\/webdeveloper\/literatum\/how-dreams-of-spacefaring-zombies-led-to-the-launch-of-sputnik-2\/","title":{"rendered":"How\u00a0Dreams of Spacefaring Zombies\u00a0Led to the\u00a0Launch\u00a0of Sputnik."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Early on a Saturday morning 60 years ago, the millennia-old dream of spaceflight came true as Sputnik 1 rocketed into orbit to become Earth’s first human-made satellite. The mission notoriously shocked the world and minted a new era of human exploration, but what’s less well-known is that Sputnik arose, in part, from a 19th century dream to raise the dead. Really.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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On this day in 1957, the 184-pound spacecraft departed from a modest Kazakh launchpad that would later evolve into the famous Baikonur Cosmodrome, currently the only spaceport on Earth capable of transporting humans to the International Space Station (ISS). The local time of liftoff was 1:28 AM on October 5, but for people living in North American, European, and Western Russian time zones, the launch occurred on Friday, October 4, and history has memorialized that date as Sputnik’s anniversary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Sputnik triggered the Space Race, a geopolitically intense and technologically productive phase of the Cold War, which climaxed with NASA’s six Apollo Moon landings from 1969 to 1972. The Sputnik crisis, a period of Western anxiety<\/a>about the clear Soviet lead in spaceflight\u2014and its reconnaissance and military implications\u2014jumpstarted American defense, science, and education initiatives that profoundly impacted the course of world events over the subsequent six decades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n