• itappearsthat@hexbear.netOP
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    7 months ago

    It was, on the other hand it made the undeniable achievement of sputnik deeply traumatizing to the american elite psyche. The only response they could muster was a kind of unhinged shrieking. Honestly I don’t think that will ever be topped in US history; per wikipedia on the sputnik crisis:

    This created a crisis reaction in national newspapers such as The New York Times, which mentioned the satellite in 279 articles between October 6, 1957, and October 31, 1957 (more than 11 articles per day).

    • emizeko [they/them]@hexbear.net
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      7 months ago

      China’s on a trajectory to make the same kind of technological breakthrough, imagine the panic if China suddenly demonstrated a room-temperature semiconductor with low energy requirements or, I dunno, zero point energy