Korean Job Discussion Forums

[pharflung]

Do you know when the Space Age officially began?

It was on Oct. 4, 1957. That was the day Sputnik was launched.

I think most Americans are aware of this. Certainly anyone who has watched the movie October Sky knows this.

But I don't think it has been burned into the Korean consciousness. Perhaps this is something to bring up with your students.

It was an enormous shock to Americans to suddenly find the Russians had beaten them into space. It shouldn't have been, since the Russians did not keep the plans for the launch a secret.

And it was not the military gesture Americans made it out to be. 1957 had been declared the International Geophysical Year. The "IGY was an international scientific effort that lasted from July 1, 1957, to December 31, 1958." So Sputnik was Russia's contribution to scientific research of space.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IGY

I think it's a nice gesture to Americans and other Westerners to give credit where credit is due - the Russians. Except that it would be closer to the truth to say their captured Germans beat our captured German rocket scientists. Whatever.

There is a bunch of stuff in the NY Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/indexes/2007/09/25/science/index.html

To Americans at that time, our answer was a satellite called Echo. It's main claim to fame was that it was brighter than Sputnik.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echo_satellite

What Americans didn't know at the time was that we sent up some pretty sophisticated spy satellites pretty durn fast. The coup de grace was something called Corona:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corona_satellite

http://www.totse.com/en/technology/space_astronomy_nasa/satchron.html

The historic tragedy here was that it made the U-2 spy fiasco of Gary Powers being shot down and consequently scuttling an Eisenhower-Khrushchev detente unnecessary.

Ice Station Zebra is said to have been inspired by Corona. For you advanced film photographers, Kodak's ultra high resolution Tech Pan film, now discontinued, was developed for Corona.

We all know how the Space Race ends: Americans land on the moon. Nixon gets bored and cancels the program. And besides, it was a Kennedy program.

But all you have to do is pull up a weather satellite photo to see the practical benefits of the space program. Not to mention the accelerated advances in electronics miniaturization and computers that contributed to the technology that makes the computer you are reading this on, as well as the MP3 players and cell phones, possible.

But most important, young people tend to have a natural fascination with space exploration. Kids who study hard can perhaps find a career in this field. And they will need to learn English to do this.

[mithridates]

It's been a good few weeks too. Japan's SELENE (Kaguya) probe was launched to the Moon, and then Dawn lifted off yesterday. Then there was Google's announcement about Moon 2.0 as well. Things are looking good.

[beachbumNC]

i did a lesson about space a few weeks back when South Korea announced their first astronaut...and the students could have cared less. they had no idea that Korea even had a space program.

i was a little shocked! it's a big deal when a country ventures into space, i thought! it should be a major source of national pride to put a man or woman in space!

basically, they felt that space is old news. they would rather talk about LG's latest mobile phone.

i was kind of sad, actually, since i've always thought space exploration (including unmanned probes like Voyager and the robot missions to Mars) was really interesting.