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yevaud
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<p>The first week of October is always one fraught with space history, but this one is particularly significant, both by the nature of the anniversaries and the fact that so much space future is playing out as well.</p> <p>Wednesday, October 1, will mark the end of the first half-century of NASA. That it falls on the first of the month is no coincidence — the legislation authorizing the new agency in 1958 was signed on July 29, but the funding to actually create it wasn’t available until the beginning of the next government fiscal year, which always starts at the beginning of October.</p> <p>NASA was formed as a response to an event that had occurred a little less than a year before when, on October 4, 1957, the nation and world were shocked by the Soviet announcement of the first satellite launched into space, Sputnik 1. While the Eisenhower administration wasn’t surprised at the event, they were surprised at the public reaction to it and had to hastily and visibly accelerate the nation’s own space efforts, which had been occurring for a few years with little fanfare. The fifty-first anniversary of that event occurs this Saturday.</p><p><strong>Full Article</strong> </p> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><em>Differential Diagnosis: </em>"<strong><em>I am both amused and annoyed that you think I should be less stubborn than you are</em></strong>."<br /> </p> </div>