Did the Sputnik have a personal effect on you? I was in Parris Island

[CK_John]

boot camp when it was launched and the rumor mill went crazy. They had us out all night with binoculars looking for it. I was just a 17 year old kid from NYC who just wanted to see the world and had no idea what I wanted to do.

But after the dust settled the USMC reviewed all IQ tests and because I had a high score I was sent to an 11 month electronic school after basic training, which led to college when I got out.

The Sputnik was one of those lucky breaks in life that changed everything for me.

[bryant69]

1. The Onion book "Our Dumb Century" has a great page on that

Bleeping metal sphere threatens America or something like that.

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

[Richard Steele]

2. I wasn't even alive then.

It's hard for me to imagine what that must have been like.
It was a whole other world then, in so many ways.

[immoderate]

3. I was in Jr. High, and about to select a high school.

I wanted to go to the High School of Performing Arts. My counselor looked at my transcript and said, "You're good in science and math. If you go to Performing Arts, the Russians will get us. You should go to a science school."

I listened to her, went to Brooklyn Tech instead. Tech was a great school, but certainly that changed my path in life. Anyway, I didn't become an engineer, but I did wind up in a dance company.

--IMM

[annabanana]

4. As a 7 year-old, not a lot ofdirect influence. My Dad bundled us kids up

and we went out on the upstairs porch at night to try and spot it above. ("Wait! I think that's it!" - "No, I'm sure I saw it over there")

Fond family memory, to be sure.

[TomInTib]

5. A one-eyed dog wandered up to our house the day the launch was announced.

Big ol' dog, too. Mastiff-sized.

We named him Sputnik.

I also had a one-eyed mare at the time.

Hell, we were so country that we really didn't comprehend what the deal was all about.

[elifino]

6. On a diesel Submarine on surface charging batteries

No real change in the direction of my life then, now I am retired but work part time IT support from home, so I do use one of the later results, via the internet.

[Individualist]

7. It didn't change my life,

but at age 14 I was fascinated (as was practically everyone else) by the fact that this small, round metal thing was orbiting the earth. Not surprisingly, it was the main topic of conversation everywhere one went. A local cafe even concocted a Sputnik sundae.

[GliderGuider]

8. I was one of the "rocket boys" like they showed in the movie "October Sky"

I turned 7 just two months after Sputnik flew, but I remember clear as anything going outside with my father to look for it. After that it was rockets, rockets, rockets. At first I just read - about Willie Ley, Robert Goddard and the Peenemunde crowd - and decorated my room with Chesley Bonestell art. I was ecstatic when Gagarin orbited, and listened on the radio in my public school classroom as Shepard and Glenn flew.

When I went to high school I met a guy a mile further down my country road who had a basement chemistry lab and wanted to start a rocket club. We spent the next three years welding up our own steel-tube rockets, mixing our own solid fuel, firing them and figuring out new ways to measure the altitude our creations got to. We only had one launch pad explosion due to a fuel miscalculation by yours truly, and towards the end put a two-stage steel-tube rocket up to about 8000 feet. Those were halcyon days.

[Vinca]

9. I remember my dad taking us to a field in back of the school

to watch for it. That's a nice memory, but I think I fell asleep before the thing passed over.

[dogman]

10. Blue sugar coated gumballs.

They became a popular candy. In reality, it removed a lot of the fiction from sci-fi.

[MyNameGoesHere]

11. well maybe.

For some reason i call people who are a little dense Sputnik. Like in "hey, what's up Sputnik" Not sure exactly why.