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Hidden Figures - Margot Lee Shetterly

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wonder, eager to know if the 184-pound<br />

metal sphere launched into orbit by the<br />

Russians could see them as they tried to<br />

see it from their backyards. They surfed<br />

the radio dial trying to lock on to the<br />

artificial moon’s beeping, its sound like<br />

an otherworldly cricket.<br />

“One can imagine the consternation<br />

and admiration that would be felt here if<br />

the United States were to discover<br />

suddenly that some other nation had<br />

already put up a successful satellite.”<br />

Those words from a letter describing a<br />

secret 1946 RAND Corporation<br />

proposal to the US Air Force, suggesting<br />

that the United States design and launch a<br />

“world circling satellite,” sounded, in<br />

1957, like the unheeded voice of<br />

Dickens’ Ghost of Christmas Future. In<br />

the 1940s, space research was deemed a

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