Forsdale: We were editing around here a little newspaper which I was in charge of. And I wrote to a number of people and said, “What do you think the Sputnik going up means in the long run?” Then I wrote a letter to Marshall and he wrote back—I’m sure you don’t remember—saying: “It’s obvious; it will result in an intense driving of attention earthward to the planet on which we live.” Totally unexpected sort of thing, that. Nobody else was saying that. But indeed that’s what he just finished saying now and what I want to say is that he didn’t make that up now; when Sputnik went up, he said, “Sure, the result will be intense consideration of . . . ”
