The Past is Present

Dan and I have lived in the same home for close to 40 years.  It doesn’t take much imagination to envision the amount of stuff we’ve accumulated.  We’ve got a basement full of our stuff, stuff we adopted from when we sold my parent’s home, and on top of that, wedding presents we are holding for Jonathan and Dana for the time they no longer live in a tiny apartment in New York City.  Our attic is also full of more stuff.

Slowly, and I mean slowly, I am trying to get rid of this stuff.  Call me sentimental, but I can’t simply toss things out.  It might be something the kids may want.  Or, someone may pay me something for it if I sold it on Ebay or Craigslist.  Or, it might be something I can donate.   Or, it might simply be something I just can’t part with for now.  There seems to be a lot of that.

Occasionally I come across something that stirs up something that is more important than the thing itself, like a childhood memory.  I was sorting through a bunch of Beatle trading cards and baseball cards and found my long-forgotten Target: Moon cards.  These were science/science fiction trading cards from either 1957 or 1958 featuring some actual space event or what space would look like in the future. The one sitting right on top was entitled “Sputnik Descending.”  Sputnik was the first man made satellite to be launched into Earth’s orbit and it was, horror of horrors, launched by the Soviet Union (now Russia) in 1957.  Sputnik’s launch intensified the arms race (the Cold War) between the U.S. and its arch enemy.

Russia was beating us in the Space Race, and we feared they were beating us in the arms race as well.  They were the first to launch animals and plants into space and bring them back alive.  The Soviets also launched the first human orbital spaceflight with Yuri Gagarin onboard in April 1961.  However, the U.S. wasn’t doing too poorly.  We were the first to launch a hominid into space and bring him back home safely.  His name was HAM.  A chimpanzee named after Holloman Aerospace Medical Center located at the Holloman Air Force base in New Mexico where he received his training.  They called the mission Number 65 so the public would have never been the wiser had HAM not made it back alive.

Early space endeavors were so important and anticipated by the public that they were heavily covered by the television networks.  There were only three stations back then – ABC, NBC, and CBS.  Most space launches were televised and watched in real time.   I clearly remember when Alan Sheppard made his flight.  He was the first pilot to make a controlled space flight back in May 1961.  All of Northwood Elementary School’s student body was glued to watching small black and white televisions in the front their classrooms during John Glenn’s historic Friendship 7 mission.  Watching the blastoff was mind boggling.  We were all holding our breath until we heard his space capsule had dropped into the sea and he was picked up by a Navy vessel.

At the same time there were so many advancements in space, the U.S. and the Soviet Union were diligently building enough nuclear bombs to destroy the earth several times over.  As a result, people all over the world were frightened that there would be a nuclear war.  Public Fallout Shelters were constructed and filled with supplies for the “lucky few” who would be able to enter them.  Some people even built their own shelters, although I never knew anyone who did.  As school children, we were taught that in the event of a nuclear attack that we should “Duck and Cover.”  We were instructed to hide under our desks and cover our heads.  Even back then kids knew better than believe that this would save us.

I remember a chart on the classroom bulletin board that showed the amount of devastation there would be if a bomb was dropped on downtown Cleveland.  Concentric circles identified the levels of radiation and the survival rates as the circles radiated further from downtown.   We could survive – maybe.

Back to Sputnik, and the memory it brought back to me.  As concerned as the American public was about the Soviet Union’s success, we also secretly admired what they had accomplished. I remember standing with my Dad in our backyard searching the night sky in search of Sputnik.  Either the local newspaper or television news must have told us what time and where in the sky we should look because we found it.    There it was, a tiny light moving across the sky.  It was man-made, and it was incredible!

The U.S. managed to survive the nuclear threats of the 1960s, the worst being the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.  The Soviets tried to place ballistic missiles in Cuba just miles away from our mainland.  The plan was stopped by President Kennedy.  It was also President Kennedy that called for us to be the first to put a man on the moon.  That mission was accomplished in 1969.

We effectively won the Space Race by being the first to land men on the moon in July 1969.  We also won the Cold War after witnessing the fall of the Soviet Union around 1991.  An attempt was also made to limit the proliferation of nuclear weapons when The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons was signed by the U.S.  and Russia in 1970.  Now it is being reported that both the U.S. and Russia want to walk away from the treaty so they can work on adding new weapon systems.

Decades have passed since the Cold War, but Russia continues to be our nemesis. However, we must also contend with an ambitious China and other nuclear nations such as North Korea, India, Pakistan and Israel.  Add to the mix terrorists on the lookout for nuclear weapons.   We live in a very insecure world and it appears we are headed toward another arms and space race.  Humans simply don’t learn.  One of these days one of these bombs is going to be set off, it is only a matter of time.  Will mankind survive?  I think that is a fair question to ask.