00:00Eye, eye, space. Eye, eye, eye, space.
00:30Big News, 1957.
00:48CBS News now presents the Big News of 1957.
00:53The events that made history during the year.
00:56The songs and words that made Big News in 1957.
00:59Reported and placed in perspective by the staff of experienced CBS newsmen
01:04who covered these events as they happened, where they happened.
01:09Now, here is your narrator, Blair Clark.
01:12This is the sound of 1957.
01:19The sound of a new era for mankind.
01:22The age of space.
01:25Russia's satellite whirling in its orbit around this earth.
01:28Sending out of the October skies its message.
01:31A message of triumph in man's struggle to conquer his physical environment.
01:36And a message of grave warning for the Western world.
01:39The beep-beep of Sputnik 1, followed four weeks later by the different tone of the Haftman satellite called Sputnik 2,
01:47was 1957's greatest surprise and shock to the United States.
01:52For it meant that the Soviet Union had leaped ahead of us in the field of rockets and missiles.
01:57It was striking evidence of a great change in the balance of power between East and West.
02:04Americans were worried.
02:05How did it happen?
02:07And how could we restore the balance?
02:09George Herman tells the story.
02:11This was to have been the great year for America's rocket and missile men.
02:15We were to have proved to the world that mankind was taking another giant step forward and upward,
02:21and that America was the vanguard of mankind.
02:23And then...
02:25Those are the sounds which roused us from our dream.
02:31It was already a troubled sleep because the Russians had claimed during the summer
02:35to have successfully tested the world's first intercontinental ballistic missile.
02:40Then on October 4th came those simultaneously thrilling and frightening beeps,
02:44followed by these words from Radio Moscow.
02:47I read notes of intent to work by research to produce anti-watt.
02:52The first artificial aircraft in the world have been in three years.
02:58This is...
02:59The first artificial aircraft in the world have been in three years.
03:29Just how much really valuable information the Russians gained
03:32from the death of the spacecraft in Sputnik 2.
03:35The major gain in world scientific information as a result of the Earth satellite program
03:39of the International Geophysical Year
03:41came from still another Army satellite, Explorer No. 3,
03:46launched at Cape Canaveral March 26th.
03:505, 4, 3, 2, 1, 0.
03:55A tiny tape recorder in Explorer 3 brought the world the first word of the deadly belt
04:06of intense radiation, now called the Van Halen belt,
04:10after the Iowa scientist who devised the scientific instruments used to detect it.
04:15Meantime, the Air Force, under direction of the Advanced Research Projects Agency of the Pentagon,
04:21was preparing an attempt to reach the moon.
04:23An experiment to find the upper limit of the Van Halen belt
04:27was worked into the pioneer lunar probes of the Air Force.
04:30The first of the Air Force's three probes was another depressing thing.
04:35The second was not exactly a success, but made history nevertheless.
04:39The first was not exactly a success.
04:415, 2, 1, 3, 0.
04:43In that zero now, still sitting on the launching pad,
04:46you should see a hitching, there it is, there's the players,
04:48America's gonna rock it up, and then into the air.
04:50It gets the rise out of the crowd, Steve now,
04:52she's climbing rapidly up into an awful spot of the sky.
04:55Big right blade at the bottom, here comes the roar,
04:58and down the outer state, beginning to read your rear,
05:01and here about a while away.
05:02I'm listening to the 10-minute type of moon rocket.
05:05Right on up into the half.
05:06In the meantime, the Air Force, on the direction of the Air Force of the Air Force of the Air Force, the Air Force of the Air Force, caused another depressing failure.
05:25Second, was the North, which was 66.
05:28It's single, scientific score, worked throughout the rise and fall of the Army's control.
05:34Get that zero now, we know that we're going on a patient about the air.
05:37Here's the Air Force, the Air Force, the Air Force, the Air Force, the Air Force, the Air Force, the Air Force, the Air Force, the Air Force, the Air Force, the Air Force, the Air Force, the Air Force.
05:43Now, flying gravity up into an all-the-roll with your guide.
05:46You've got a tanking force, the Air Force, the Air Force, the Air Force, the Air Force, the Air Force.
06:07Clear the area for takeoff, the flag will be radioactive.
06:09Clear the area for takeoff, everybody away from the station.
06:11Clear the area for takeoff, clear the area for takeoff.
06:13We had said goodbye to our families.
06:20Our tall, slim spaceship gleamed in the floodlights
06:23like a gigantic silver bullet aimed at the sky.
06:26This would be man's first journey to the moon.
06:30Four of us were going.
06:31At the last moment, our radio man fell sick,
06:33and my young son Tony was going in his place.
06:37The airlock closed behind us.
06:43Buckle yourselves down securely, men.
06:47The starting acceleration will squeeze us like oranges.
06:51Start the gyros.
06:58Everything ready, General Thayer, Sweeney, Tony?
07:01Count off for firing.
07:03Five, four, three, two, one, fire!
07:11Tony, right now!
07:13The acceleration will break your back!
07:17What's happening, Daddy?
07:19I can't move!
07:27We will be on the tour.
07:29You see, out here in space,
07:31there's no weight to anything.
07:38We've reached out to space, men.
07:41You can take off your safety belts.
07:43Now I know how a bullet feels when it's fired out of a gun.
07:48Hey, what's going on?
07:50I'm floating around!
07:53Now I'm walking on the sailor!
07:57Hey, Dad!
07:58Pull me down!
07:59The shot was aborted, but three days later, it lifted off on schedule, and five and a half
08:15hours after that, the four astronauts in two spacecraft were close enough to look through
08:19the ports and see each other as they flew nose-to-nose.
08:22This is about 10 feet above the left of the radio.
08:24We're just flying nose-to-nose.
08:24They're just flying nose to nose.
08:28How big is it?
08:33Right?
08:34We can very clearly see the right scanner something.
08:38Any?
08:39Roger.
08:39At one point Shira saw a strap hanging from the Gemini 7 capsule.
09:09And so it went on as the two craft flew around each other with the spacemen talking and snapping pictures.
09:19If the accomplishments of the United States in space during 1965 seem to recall the days of Buck Rogers,
09:25even they seem to pale alongside the flurry of reports of unidentified flying objects, or as some call them, flying saucers.
09:33The reports came from many places throughout the Mid and Southwest.
09:37Like this report from Deputy Sheriff Everett Tucker of Wellington, Kansas.
09:41I had a call out of Wichita and said it had been confirmed on these objects.
09:45And my wife and I were out on the rail, but we didn't see this object to the east.
09:49And it was a big round light, you know, and there was paper going out the back, but it looked like fire or not.
09:57Produced and directed by paper smoke.
09:59And it was a long result, but it was pretty big. It, uh, well, it was enormous.
10:04It looked like a horse tank.
10:07Space officials called it ridiculous.
10:10But was it mass hypnosis, overactive imagination, an experimental spacecraft, or a new military weapon?
10:16Was it theirs or ours? Or was it really a visitor from outer space?
10:21Who's to know, with all that happened in 1965, almost anything is believable.
10:29I-Dalien!
10:31Oh, my God.
10:33Please.
