and sputnik itself means fellow traveler. it was a ballistic missile head without explosives. that was a signal. we freaked in america. nasa got founded. on the fear factor of sputnik. all right. so we then go to the moon on the fear factor that russia will control high ground. then we go to the moon, space enthusiasts say, oh, we're on the moon by '69. we'll be on mars in another ten years. they completely did not understand why we got to the moon in the first place. we were at war. once we saw that russia was not ready to land on the moon, we stopped going to the moon. that should not surprise anybody looking back on it. meanwhile, however, that entire era galvanized the nation. forget the war. it galvanized us all to dream about tomorrow, to think about the homes of tomorrow, cities of tomorrow, the food of tomorrow. everything was future world. future land. the world's fair, all of this was focused on enabling people to make tomorrow come. that was a cultural mind set that the space program brought upon us. we reaped the

all of a sudden we wake up and soviets up there with sputnik. five years of failure, vanguard program, rocket after rocket. finally this guy glenn, all-american guy from ohio comes out there and does this and orbits the earth three times. >> it's easy to imagine john glenn would then go on to a great career after that potentially in politics. candidates seized on him and said you can be one of us. hung out with them for a while. he did eventually run a couple times, became a president. even ran for president, though that didn't go very well. didn't actually translate into american politics. but at the time the country was setting big goals and achieving them. >> he was my home state senator growing up so i knew him that role in space. chris: how did you look at him, american hero, right? >> totally. and it's sort of as big as the olympic fire we had, nationalism spirit because it was so much bigger. i think we don't have all of that. rs talking about how he lifted the whole country. wasn't even just a sports here like, say, michael jordan. >> th

and that was too bad, also they orbited sputnik, a model of which is in the center hall outside if you look up toward the balcony area. exact model of it. went up on the 4th of october, 1957, beeping its way around the world. khrushchev once again said the u.s. sleeps under a soviet moon. we tried to counter a few months later with vanguard and it blew up after a four-foot lift off the pad. we remember those pictures very, very well. with those background entered the manned program. tensions were brought to a new level, lines were drawn and the space race was under way. the media concentrated mainly on the race aspects of it. i always thought that it was something after people had looked up for tens of thousands of years and wondered what was up there, it was something that once we developed a capability to do this, it would have happened sometime anyway. the i'm pe tus for it back at that time certainly was the space race. now we had the ability to learn, though. it was going to be of great, great value, space race or not. ment kennedy was looked at as a space president, still is beca

it had been five years since the russians launched the first sputnik and john glenn carried a nationalche that badly needed boost on to the launch pad. >> godspeed, john glenn. >> 3 2, 1. >> john glenn became the first human to orbit the earth helping american become the trailblazer in space exploration. >> zero g and i feel fine. that view is tremendous. >> the ophthalmologist were concerned that your eyes may change shape and your vision would end of so you could not see the panel enough to make an emergency reentry. >> it's a good thing they were wrong. he circled the earth three times in five hours and had to steer by hand. on reentry he stopped fireworks. >> that was a real fireball. >> he watched part of his spaceship tear away and you read the heat shield would not hold up. >> the deal looks good, over. >> it was a safe and beautiful landing. today, his concern is budget cuts. >> we lead the world on innovation and technology. if we ever lose that lead, we will lose leadership. >> he hopes an american will land on mars and once again send the nation's pride in to the great beyon

years earlier by launching what was basically a silver basketball with a flashing light on it called sputnik. they sent up the first astronaut. they were the first to orbit. the only rocket we had was a converted ballistic nuclear missile, so glenn sat on top of that in a capsule so primitive by today's standards there is more technology in the average ford f-150 than there was aboard "friendship 7." >> three, two, one, zero. >> reporter: the montage in "the right stuff" is all real. the u.s. failed at a number of launch attempts and there was no guarantee glenn would survive this one. off he went accompanied by the famous blessing. >> god speed, john glenn. >> reporter: the nation stopped 50 years ago today. he was only up there for five hours, three orbits yet there was so much we didn't know. nasa scientists feared his eyes wouldn't work in zero g weightlessness. that didn't turn out to be the case. >> zero g, i feel fine. >> reporter: he reported seeing brilliant flying sparkles out the window. >> i'm in a mass of some very small particles that are brilliantly lit up. i never saw anythin

right in the middle of the space here, and the reason for that was that russia had just launched sputnikfirst satellite, and the space race was off in the united states, and americans were very nervous about russia being ahead of us technologically, by launching this rocket. so the united states chose grand central, which really is a town hall where important news is delivered to the most people, as a place to reinforce the strength of america so that people could be patriotic and feel confident that we were in the race and we could also launch our own rockets, just like the russians. >> you'd think a building that represented so much that was great about america would be considered a historical treasure, yet it came surprisingly close to being torn down. that and more, when we return. >> grand central terminal dates all the way back to 1870. then, in 1913, it was totally rebuilt. >> the railroad companies built their terminals in order to show off the strength and the power of their companies. this building was a symbol of the speed and the power and the success of the railroads and the

it began when president eisenhower felt in reaction to sputnik that state schools were not producing the science experts and the math experts that we needed to compete in the cold war. so, there were originally federal initiatives to help states produce more scientists and mathmeticians. in the '60s, president johnson fought and achieved a degree of federal involvement in schools. federal funding for schools. that was used to help disadvantaged students in the schools. throughout the years, there have been people who thought this modest federal involvement is terrible. most of the states seem to welcome the federal aid. >> diane, democrats line in las vegas. >> caller: hello. i'm a school teacher and i have some comments about no child left behind criteria. i have asked and asked what is proficiency and i have been advised that it goes up every year. that the goal is 100%. it doesn't appear to be a reasonable expectation. >> that is an interesting question. this is an arcane topic. i appreciate your question. a lot of people misunderstand it. i often times have difficulty understandi

today the 200 million inhas been tan tants state bend their backs and their talents to the will and sputnikd the uss proficiency in the area of technical ability. throughout the vast stretches of this empire, you find new industrial cities, plants, assembly lines, the most modern equipment. soviet products of every description awaiting delivery and reaching industrially backward areas of the noncommunist world. teams of russian technicians are available to operate this regime. this is economic penetration, paving the way for political takeover. the end of soviet friendship which usually precedes an attempt at economic penetration has been reaching into every part of the road which shows the slightest to receive it. recently we've seen it extend into our own hemisphere into turbulent cuba where it was embraced as a triumph of soviet policy. a few statistics will demonstrate how serious this threat is becoming to the free world. of the entire annual soviet economic capability, their gross national product, 70% or it may run as high as 80% is devoted to the area of heavy industry. the u.s. and

they had beaten us into space with sputnik and they sent a man up for a full day, for a full year before a war that was not yet a shooting war and we were losing badly. getting him up successfully and bringing him down safely was a huge thing that gave the nation the sense that we will be okay both militarily and exploratorially >> what are we giving up? >> there's nothing wrong with stopping the shuttle program. it was an elegant machine, it was a complex machine and it was a crazily fickle machine and it killed 14 people, so it was time for it to go. what was missing was a long-term plan in place that would be followed through by successive administrations to get us back. we did that before. we did it with apollo, there were three or four differe administrations involved in getting us to the moon. we need to quit changing courses with every new administration, we need a plan and we need to follow it year after year. >> thanks for joining us. what political story will be making headlines in the next 24 hours. that is next right here -- and for all of you jeremy lin news, lin's 28.14 ass

back in 1957, when a 31-year-old queen elizabeth was visiting the united states right in the wake of sputnik and central high school and little rock, she was visiting and she visited the washington area, visited the giant department store is but one of the things she did was to go to bird stadium. when they north carolina cargoes were playing north hennepin sonny jim payton who would been the coach at maryland for many years it just gone to north carolina and they were playing what had to be described as a grudge match and let's see if i can make this thing work. no, it's not going to do it. any help would be greatly appreciated. let's see about this. i need my technical people here. left and right. thank you. so this is going to the right. so this is governor luther hodges. he is greeting her majesty and the fans. just imagine what is going through her mind. so, this is the picture i wanted to show. let me start at another university. this is the university of texas in austin and this is a picture of the nanoscience center. this building represents one of the great things american universit

what was at stake and the extent to which americans were invested in your success in the wake of sputnik? >> we were very much aware of this. it was something that... those were the depths of the cold war. and the soviets at that time were claiming technical superiority to the u.s. because their rockets were launching while ours were too often blowing up on the launch pad. we were anxious to prove to the rest of the world that this was not true. in fact, the soviets been taking thousands of kids into russia and giving them their education and sending them back. it was still, whether communism would be a wave of the future or not hadn't been settled at that time. it's something we were aware of. it guided us i guess a little bit or put impetus behind it. we trained for about two years. there were equipment delays that added another year to that. it was a time period where i think the... some of those early flights helped bring america back into sort of looking at ourselves a little bit differently. it was good for the american psyche. i'm glad we could have some impact on that. >> woodruf

so the question is what is our sputnik-like moment? one that you proposed is an absolutely worthy one. looking at energy and energy independence. and i do know that kids get excited about it. we have a program here in the district of columbia that's a part of our eye test grant and the thing that is really exciting is that those kids actually build wind mills and they work on developing solar power and things like this and they are so excited with this. so yes, you are right. we can do this. host: shirley mall come heads the american association for the advancement of science. thanks for coming in today. host: that's all for "washington journal" this morning. we will be following cpac here later on today, we'll join that live at 3:00. you can find out more at our website. have a good rest of the weekend. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2012]

what is our sputnik moment today? is it bridges collapsing with people dying? is it paying god awful prices for energy supplies and not creating our new energy supplies? is it ignoring a water economy that is to come and will be a strength for this nation and a wisdom to invest in a water resources? all of these moments could be referred to as sputnik moments and we need to take those experiences and that recent history and have it influence our thinking and have us go forward with a sound investment in infrastructure. so, i see great potential here in this budget. i see great opportunity and i see investing our way to opportunity, investing our way to an economic recovery, investing our way to the reigniting of the american dream which is our principle foundation by the democratic caucus in this house. let's reignite that american dream, let's do it through small business, through investment in entrepreneurs and a thriving middle class and infrastructure is prime amongst those areas of investment. mr. garamendi: mr. tonko, you are so very correct about reignit

by surprise launching sputnik and later sent two cosmonauts into orbit making them the clear frontrunnershe soviets put two people into orbit before you went. >> that only added to the sort of i guess, the depressed psyche of the united states at that time. >> but the newly created space agency, nasa, had a plan. it had rigorously selected glenn and six other test pilots who became known to the nation as the mercury 7 who launched the u.s. on president kennedy's pledge to put a man on the moon within the decade. >> friendship 7, the shoot looks very good over. >> glenn returned to earth as a hero. tom wolf described in his novel, the right stuff. >> it brought people to tears. nobody else that i can think of in the 20th century did that. he was the. >> here's some foot anl of the tickertape parade what was that like. >> nothing like a tickertape parade in new york city. it was an outpouring of emotion that day. >> it wasn't his last hero's welcome. in 1998 glenn made history again when he returned to space aboard shuttle discovery. becoming the oldest astronaut ever at age 77. >> this wee

of course, something we're talking about in other circles, iran's potential sputnik moment as they launchully launched a domestically built satellite into orbit. analysts say it's such a serious concern because it's very similar technology to what's used in intercontinental ball list tickic missiles. rick santelli with the santelli exchange. he's been digesting jobs, ism and a lot more today, rick? >> i tell you what, carl, don't shoot the passenger. for a millionth time i wish we could create a million jobs a month. okay? and what this report tells us is, if you look at the side with the body counts for job created that pool is growing. but the problem is the amount of jobs is growing but the amount of people embedded in this surrounded by the unemployed were taking the unemployed out of the equation. so what we're left with is, a positive picture on creating jobs but we're losing the war in terms of things like adjustments for population. you can call those revisions hogwash but, none the less, the fact of the revision, season revision to population based on census information just mean