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Before he died, my Grandfather told me about the night Sputnik launched.

At the time, he was a tank commander in Germany. And it was all-hands-on-deck as NATO forces scrambled, expecting the onset of World War Three.

Luckily, things remained peaceful.

But, the launch of Sputnik 1 changed everything. It kicked-off the space race, and ignited the public’s imagination about what lay beyond Earth.

From Star Trek with its hopeful optimism, to Night of the Living Dead with its Venus Space Probe carrying strange radiation into the atmosphere and creating ghoulish zombies — space exploration dominated pop culture.

There were also plenty of thinkpieces and academic articles at the time, explaining that outer space was the “new economy” and how space travel would completely revolutionize every aspect of life.

Space and satellites were important and did change everything.

But not in the way that most people in the 1950’s and 60’s imagined.

Outer space does have a huge impact on your daily life today, from texting friends to shopping with a credit card, but nobody is playing blackjack at a casino on the moon. Or dogfighting Soviet spacecraft near the rings of Saturn.