Sputnik, Cold War Nostalgia, and 9/11: The Lessons of Sputnik post-9/11

It is not an anniversary we usually celebrate and it was not any fun for the United States at the time. Fifty years ago today, on the night of October 4, 1957, a 22-inch aluminum ball, primitive by today's standards, sent the American public, and the policy and scientific elite, into high crisis.[1]