Pride in humanity, shame that my country hadn't got there first. I was ten years old. The first satellite I actually saw was Echo, not too long after it went up; Growing up in Tampa, though, I did see a lot of launches from the Cape. One in particular, late at night in the early 60s, I could hear, a low rumble from over a hundred miles away! At first I had trouble sorting it all out, the bird must have been in airless space by the time it was visible to me. I finally realized that I was hearing the noise from lift-off, and that it had taken that long for the sound to travel across the state.