Fifty Years on the Threshold of Space

There has been some small to-do over the fact that January 31st was the 50th anniversay of the launching of Explorer 1, the United State's first orbiting satellite. Rand Simberg has posted a great retrospective piece about the 50 years from then till now.

I celebrated the day by putting in the DVD for one of the finiest films ever made about the Sputnik era, October Sky.

This is also the film that made me a Chris Cooper fan, and one of the three or four movies guaranteed to make me cry.

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