News Snapshot:
Photo by Marcos del Mazo/LightRocket via Getty Images As an eight-year-old in October 1957, I recall listening to Radio Moscow broadcasting the beep-beep-beep of Sputnik 1, the first Earth satellite, on my brother’s tinny transistor radio. The Americans’ embarrassment at being beaten by this first dramatic move in what became the space race was compounded a few weeks later when the US Vanguard rocket barely managed to rise a single metre before it fell back and exploded. I also recall a playground ditty (to the tune of Perry Como’s “Catch a Falling Star”) – “Catch a falling Sputnik, put it...
