Ever since the Soviets launched a beach ball sized chunk of metal into orbit, the shock has remained part of the American fabric. On October 4, 1957, the Russians placed Sputnik1 on top of a modified ballistic missile design, the R-7 Semyorka, and sent it up into history. For a little more than two months, 1,440 orbits, the Western world could look up at the skies and feel the Communist threat in their own backyards.
The “sputnik moment” is synonymous with a wake-up call though one that deserves the heightened urgency of its own special class. The term has become overused, of course, since politics is the art of getting voters interested in things they don't understand or don't really care much about on their own.
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