{"id":1335,"date":"2008-02-02T16:01:46","date_gmt":"2008-02-02T16:01:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/gregladen\/2008\/02\/02\/happy-birthday-the-space-age\/"},"modified":"2008-02-02T16:01:46","modified_gmt":"2008-02-02T16:01:46","slug":"happy-birthday-the-space-age","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/2008\/02\/02\/happy-birthday-the-space-age\/","title":{"rendered":"Happy Birthday The Space Age"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>or at least, the US Space Age.  And belated (sorry, The Space Age, please don&#8217;t get mad at me!)<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/scienceblogs.com\/gregladen\/wp-content\/blogs.dir\/472\/files\/2012\/04\/i-8795fd78e6a57162aacfc30847f18e3e-Explorer_I.jpg?w=604\" alt=\"i-8795fd78e6a57162aacfc30847f18e3e-Explorer_I.jpg\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><!--more-->It was fifty years ago on Janurary 31st, 1958, when Explorer 1 was thrown into space by three Rocket Scientists (pictured here seconds before launch).  Explorer 1 basically went up and then came down.  Later, following the invention of the Rocket Launcher, similar efforts went higher, sometimes into orbit.<a href=\"http:\/\/cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com\/archive\/2008\/01\/31\/624367.aspx\">[source]<\/a>Here&#8217;s a video:<object width=\"425\" height=\"355\"><param name=\"movie\" value=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/w1gj2sTgfR8&#038;rel=1\"><\/param><param name=\"wmode\" value=\"transparent\"><\/param><\/object>I think this is very cool.  Notice that they had a whole different conception of what a countdown is. Also, they take off at night, presumably to not run into the sky.  Also, why is that thing spinning?(Notice also the invocation of the power of prayer&#8230;a very important component of early Rocket Science.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>or at least, the US Space Age. And belated (sorry, The Space Age, please don&#8217;t get mad at me!)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[191],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5fhV1-lx","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1335"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1335"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1335\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}