Word: sputnik
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Created in the panicky wake of the Soviets' launching of Sputnik, the world's first satellite, DARPA's mission, Cheney said, is "to make sure that America is never again caught off guard." So, the Agency does the basic research that may be decades away from battlefield applications. It doesn't develop new weapons, as much as it pioneers the technologies that will make tomorrow's weapons better...
Outside China, however, the worries continue. "Recent events have made Western governments very nervous that this is just the tip of the iceberg," says Saydjari. "[The Chinese] have launched the equivalent of a Sputnik in cyberspace, and the U.S. and other countries are scrambling to catch...
...event that occasioned this headlong dash onto a banana peel was the launch just two months earlier--and 50 years ago this October--of Russia's fabled Sputnik, the world's first satellite. The U.S. reacted to the event as any mature, technologically savvy nation would, which is to say we lost our marbles. The Russians had seized the high ground of space, we cried. It would be only a matter of time before they were gliding overhead, dropping bombs on us like overripe fruit from a highway overpass...
That risk turned out to be a wee overstated, and a half-century on, Americans are marking Sputnik's birthday as enthusiastically as the rest of the world--actually, a little more. What we have to celebrate, after all, is not just what the Soviets achieved but the way we reacted to it--at least after we got hold of ourselves. Moscow, we figured, was already scary enough, what with Eastern Europe under lockdown and a bristle of missiles protecting it. There was no reason to make the bad guys badder; instead, we ought to make ourselves smarter...
...doctorates has fallen dramatically since 1970, when it hit nearly 15% for the year; for more than a decade, the number of doctorates has grown less than 3.5% a year. The staggering late-1960s growth in Ph.D.s followed a period of increased attention on gifted kids after Sputnik. Now we're coasting...