Sputnik's children
A 585mm-wide silver ball weighing 83.6kg seems an innocent enough invention. That it changed the way the world saw itself when the Soviet Union launched it into space, 50 years ago next Thursday, gives us pause for thought given the rise of China. Sputnik, the world's first artificial satellite, started the space race. As soon as the rival United States caught wind of it, an intense battle began to conquer space. But while the instrument ultimately put animals and people into orbit, men on the moon, craft hurtling beyond our solar system, and piqued interest in a manned mission to Mars, it also had a major earthly impact.
As Sputnik soared high, sending bleeps back to scientists and ham radio operators, the planet was swept by the realisation that a new era of discovery and creativity had begun. Science, education and even global politics moved to the fore. Americans were the most deeply affected. Sputnik was a wake-up call that sent the nation scurrying to make up for lost ground. Round one went to the Soviets, as did round two - putting a dog and then a man into orbit. But the US had well and truly caught up by 1969, putting the first men on the moon.
Space travel expanded the bounds of science. Soon there were computers, medical breakthroughs and technological wonders.
But the fact that the Soviets were the first to conquer space also sparked a scramble on Earth for unclaimed portions of territory such as Antarctica and the continental shelves. Sputnik gave us the Antarctic Treaty in 1959 and, from there, a succession of international agreements dictating the use and ownership of the environment from the deepest seas to the highest mountains. There has been no more creative period in global rule-making.
I was born five years after Sputnik, in the year that John Glenn became the first American to orbit the earth - 10 months after Soviet Yuri Gagarin entered history as the first person to achieve the feat. These events sparked currents that were felt at the individual level, if indirectly, even by small boys. At primary school in Australia in the late 1960s, my aspirations and those of my peers were for jobs that went far beyond the ordinary: we wanted to be astronauts or scientists. At secondary school, the emphasis was on maths and science subjects. Those who performed poorly at these and excelled in languages and history were made to feel like second-class students. All that seems a long way off, in time and focus. The enthusiasm for treaty-making continued through the 1970s and 1980s, and there are now safeguards and organisations dedicated to most facets of human existence. Yet implementation remains patchy. The US, for one, refuses to join several treaties - on global warming, the International Criminal Court and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, among others - and seems intent on breaking the rules of the World Trade Organisation.
The tussle for natural resources beneath, and shipping routes across, the melting Arctic ice cap shows that not all eventualities have been considered; no international treaty covers the region. That nations such as North Korea, Iran and Israel can get around the rules on nuclear weapons reveals the weaknesses of what is in place.
All that will change in the coming years, though - and China holds the key. When Yang Liwei blasted into orbit on October 15, 2003, making the nation the third to put a person into space, it quite literally lit a rocket under the US - much as Sputnik did on October 4, 1957.
China plans unmanned missions to the moon from 2012, and will start on a manned one in 2017. The US now also wants to return there, and is working towards putting people on Mars. But it is China's emergence as an economic, political and space power that will propel the world towards an era of strengthening the international laws that are in place and creating new ones.
Sputnik was the dawn of the first era of the world reassessing where it was and where it wanted to be. China's space programme is hurtling us towards a new age of innovation and creativity.
Peter Kammerer is the Post's foreign editor
