50 years of space (Not related to soaring)

I remember vividly a cold dark night in the New Mexico desert. It was
1957 and the Russians had just launched Sputnik. The USAF needed help
obtaining orbital data for the worlds first satellite.

I found myself, a 16 year old high school science club member, at a
theodolite staring at the star filled sky waiting for a tiny, swift
dot of light to cross the reticle. In my hand was a push button to
record a tone on a tape recorder as the dot made its crossing.

Another track on the same tape recorder captured the National Bureau
of Standards WWV time signal from a short wave radio receiver. A
plumb bob hung from the theodolite exactly over the tiny cross on a
master geodetic survey marker. The azimuth index had been set to a
airway light blinking Morse Code on the Franklin Mountains 60 miles
distant. The reticle was aligned as near as we could determine to
Sputniks expected path.

As I waited, my thoughts were of Clark, Heinlein and Asimov. It was no
longer science fiction, the space age had arrived and I was a small
part of it.

It didn't seem that strange. I was standing less than 60 miles from
Trinity where the first atomic bomb test had been conducted 12 years
earlier. I had watched captured German V2 rockets launched from White
Sands Missile Range.

Just after I recorded the passage of Sputnik, the moon rose over the
Sacramento Mountains. It was huge and bright. Bright enough that I
could read the vernier markings on the theodolite by its light. How
long until a human stands on its surface, I wondered.

It would just be 12 years. WWV ticked off the seconds.....

Bill Daniels