title: Something New Under the Sun: Satellites and the Beginning of the Space Age
author:  Helen Gavaghan 
description: ...I found this a gripping read. As Suomi remarked, "How hard we worked!" Having read Gavaghan's book, you can believe it, of him and all the other pioneers. To fight their way through technical, budgetary and bureaucratic obstacles, and to produce the prototypes of satellites we take for granted today, the scientists and engineers needed superhuman dedication. It is fitting that their efforts be acknowledged, admired and recorded for posterity. -- <i>New Scientist, Charles Sheffield</i>
zlib_text: > **Arthur C. Clarke**  
  >  ******The Other Side of the Sky**  
  >  ******1957**
  
  >  **Special Delivery**
  
  I can still remember the excitement, back in 1957, when Russia launched the
  first artificial satellites and managed to hang a few pounds of instruments up
  here above the atmosphere. Of course, I was only a kid at the time, but I went
  out in the evening like everyone else, trying to spot those little magnesium
  spheres as they zipped through the twilight sky hundreds of miles above my
  head. It’s strange to think that some of them are still there—but that now
  they’re _below_ me, and I’d have to look down toward Earth if I wanted to see
  them…
  
  Yes, a lot has happened in the last forty years, and sometimes I’m afraid that
  you people down on Earth take the space stations for granted, forgetting the
  skill and science and courage that went to make them. How often do you stop to
  think that all your long-distance phone calls, and most of your TV programs,
  are routed through one or the other 