Space Forum / Shuttle / March 2007

Yes and no.  A lot of people across America saw what they *thought*
was Sputnik - the fact that they saw a different object in orbit in
essentially irrelevant.  Whether it was Sputnik itself, or the 3rd
stage - it was still something that had never been before, a man made
body in LEO.

I do not recall if it was in the book - it's been a long time since I
read it.

You've never read Rocket Boys/October Sky?  Better late than never.
Much different from the film, by the way.

In any case, as I wrote in the memoir, Sputnik's transit over Coalwood
was predicted in an article published in The Welch Daily News,
McDowell County's paper of record.  Sure enough, at the appointed
time, a very bright star appeared.   I wrote, "Then I saw the bright
little ball, moving majestically across the narrow star field between
the ridgelines.  I stared at it with no less rapt attention than if it
had been God Himself in a golden chariot riding overhead.  It soared
with what seemed to me inexorable and dangerous purpose, as if there
were no power in the universe that could stop it...  I felt that if I
stretched out enough, I could touch it.  "Pretty thing," Mom said,
summing up the general reaction of the backyard crowd."  Of course,
her enthusiasm had been somewhat dimmed after my father had predicted
President Eisenhower would never allow anything Russian to fly over
Coalwood.

Was it Sputnik we saw?  Or a stage of its rocket?  I do not know, but
I know we saw something grand that night.  One must remember that in a
place like Coalwood in 1957, there was virtually no light pollution.
Even before Sputnik, I would sometimes go outside in my backyard and
see with my naked eye more stars than I have ever seen since, with the
possible exception of deepest Montana when I go dinosaur hunting.
There was also an aching in our hearts that night to see that
magnificent little robotic adventurer cross in a place none of us
really believed anything would ever actually go.

Years later, when I was negotiating with the Russians on the Space
Station (and trying to undo the damage Al Gore had done with his over-
promises to them - a quick political aside), a Russian friend asked me
if I wanted to see Sputnik I, that he knew where it was kept.  I
laughed, thinking he was joking.  "No joke," he said.  "You see, we
built two.  Randomly, we launched one of them and kept the other.  So,
in a way, the one we have was as much Sputnik I as the one that
flew."  He took me to a huge warehouse, and opened a crate and there
it was.  I was allowed to touch it which I did with utmost reverence.
Then, it was boxed up and put away.  I felt a bit like Indiana Jones.
At that moment, I also remembered that night in Coalwood and that's
why perhaps that paragraph was written so vividly and confidently in
RB/OS a few years later.

By the way, the annual October Sky Festival in Coalwood will be on
Oct. 6, which is not quite but nearly the 50th Anniversary of Sputnik.
Go to www.homerhickam.com and click on Rocket Boys/October Sky for
details.

I was interviewed for the Sputnik movie, by the way.  Although Sputnik
was Russian, I believe that it transcends them, and every nation.
However, I also believe that Sputnik became more of an American story
than a Russian one.  Because a year later,in the autumn of 1958, the
United States launched her answer to Sputnik:  Us, the students of
America, and we were bound for glory.  As Mr. Turner, the principal of
Big Creek High School, said when addressing the student body about our
new, much more difficult curriculum, "The Russians?  I pity them.  If
they knew you like I know you, they'd be shaking in their boots!"  Of
course, he later had more than a few qualms about the "bomb builders"
of the Big Creek Missile Agency.  Thank God for Miss Riley.

Best wishes and happy reading,

Homer Hickam