I mentioned to a colleague the other day, as the 50th anniversary of the launch of Sputnik approached, that I remember standing in a neighbor’s front yard in Augusta, Ga., in 1957, and watching it traverse the evening sky. “How could you see it? It was only as big as a basketball,” he responded.
I have always remembered how we gathered in Louie Carr’s front yard to watch it go by. All of us kids, to while away the time waiting for it, were having a hula-hoop contest and trading Elvis Presley bubble gum cards (how’s that for a ’50s memory?). But my friend’s incredulity made me wonder if I had manufactured that memory.
Some articles, like the one linked above, claim flatly that you couldn’t see Sputnik with the naked eye, that it was only the rocket booster in a similar orbit that people saw. Others support my memory. When we all watched for Sputnik in Louie’s front yard the satellite had been in orbit for a few days. We were told to watch for it late in the evening when the sun illuminated it, and I remember we saw it on several different nights.
So, did we see the actual satellite or its rocket booster? Either way, we witnessed history.
