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Beneficial:The Hole, Not the Drill
Eh, what’s in it for me to be “vewy, vewy quiet”?
—Bugs Bunny
Beep. Beep. Beep.
This was the note that an NBC radio announcer called the “sound that forevermore separates the old from the new.”1 It was coming from a metallic beach ball hurtling through space. It was the sound of Sputnik—and it was the sound of defeat.
The United States struggled early in the space race, starting its losing streak when the Soviet Union launched that first satellite in 1957 and falling behind yet again when cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space in 1961.
Determined to catch up, John F. Kennedy sent an urgent ...
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