[LINK] How a satellite changed the world - 50 yrs ago

[Jan Whitaker]

>         Subject:        How a satellite called 
> Syncom changed the world — www.latimes.com —
>
>http://www.readability.com/articles/luffrfa0
>
>On July 26, 1963 — exactly 50 years ago — they 
>launched a 78-pound satellite called Syncom that 
>could receive signals from Earth and then transmit them back across the globe.
>
>Of all the technological breakthroughs made in 
>Los Angeles during the Cold War — the laser, the 
>first supersonic jet fighter, the Apollo moon 
>ship, stealth aircraft, the space shuttle, the 
>intercontinental ballistic missile system and 
>much else — the creation of a communications 
>satellite has had the largest and most enduring 
>cultural, social and economic impact.
>
>The little Syncom has morphed into 
>communications satellites the size of school 
>buses, weighing more than 13,000 pounds, 
>operating with solar wings the length of a 
>basketball court and running electronics with 
>more power than a typical house wired to the electrical grid.
>
>Electronic credit card authorizations, 
>international television signals, email and 
>social media — all the things that define our 
>modern connected culture — were not even 
>imagined by the public in the 1950s and would 
>not exist today in many areas of the world without communications satellites.


Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
jwhit at janwhitaker.com
blog: http://janwhitaker.com/jansblog/
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Our truest response to the irrationality of the 
world is to paint or sing or write, for only in such response do we find truth.
~Madeline L'Engle, writer

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