Английский язык: Аннотирование и реферирование текста

189 When Sputnik was launched, the public thought a space future would consist of gigantic space stations and colonies on the moon and other planets. The fear was warfare in space raining down on Earth. "The reality is that the things we expected did not come to pass, and the things that we did not fathom changed our lives in so many ways that we cannot even envision a life that’s different at this point," said Roger Launius, senior curator at the Smithsonian Institution’s Na- tional Air and Space Museum. America got a taste of that in May 1998. Just one communica- tions satellite malfunctioned. More than 30 million pagers went silent. Credit card payment approvals didn’t work. National Public Radio and CNN’s Airport Television Network went off the air in some places. "The civilization we live in today is as different from the one that we lived in the mid-1950s as the mid-1950s were from the American revolution," said Howard McCurdy, an American University public policy professor. "It’s hard to imagine these things happening without space. I guess I could have a computer, but I wouldn’t be able to get on the Internet." All thanks to an 184-pound (84-kilogram) metal ball with spikes shot into space by a country that doesn’t exist anymore. Totalitarianism? Totally opposite Because Sputnik was launched by a centralized communist gov- ernment, people feared that space would help totalitarianism, said Georgia Tech University history professor Steve Usselman. However, satellites "clearly undermined state authority, particularly national au- thority," Usselman said. "It’s taken us in exactly the opposite direc- tion." As satellites went commercial, they spurred on financial markets, opened up information to people across the globe – which is not what centralized governments want, Usselman said. Spy satellites also enabled countries to keep an eye on their ene- mies. "Except for crazy guys in airplanes, nobody can pull off a sneak attack," McCurdy said. "I think it made the world much less dangerous than it was in 1956." President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1967 said that it