You said -- "Sputnik I, whatever ... I can say with a fair degree of confidence I'm the only member of FR who actually saw Sputnik I in orbit October 1957."
I'm about to shatter your confidence then...
When I was a kid in Tulsa, Oklahoma, my family went out into the backyard looking for Sputnik, because it was reported to be going over at a certain time. And sure enough, there it was, moving across the sky, in the early evening.
It was a shiny moving spot in the sky, at the right time and right place where it was reported to be. And, of course, in those days -- there was *nothing* else in the skies (no International Space Station, no hundreds of other satellites, like you can see now, all the time). That was the *only thing* out there, at that time.
And, I'm sure many hundreds of thousands of others saw it, too. We were not the only ones...
Regards,
Star Traveler
P.S. -- I can get out my "Starry Night" program and check the satellites, and at any hour of the day, there will be a flood of them going across the sky, these days. It's easy to get a loot at many of them. And it's easy to get a look at the ISS (International Space Station).
I saw it, it wasn't a rare occurence. Anybody old enough could have seen it.
You bet. I specifically remember it. TIME has this from an article up on the web:
Twilight Sight. The Russians made their sputnik more conveniently visible in their own territory than in the U.S. during its first trips around the earth, but U.S. observers will get their chance eventually. Dr. Joseph A. Hynek, director of the observatory's satellite-tracking program, calculates that the satellite's orbit shifts around the earth at 4° per day. This will bring it over the U.S. at twilight on about Oct. 20, when it should be visible through small telescopes or binoculars.
I love that "eventually". The article is date Oct. 14, and probably didn't make home delivery until after the 20th. We were used to that though ... factored it in.