What if the first satellites had gone differently?

A beeping metal sphere in orbit, and, soon after, weather, navigation and global broadcasting from space.

If it had gone differently: Space stays out of reach; there is no satellite weather, no global live television, no GPS.

1. 1969The Moon landing, No one leaves Earth; the high-water mark of 20th-century ambition, and a generation's sense of the possible, never happens.
2. 1983The mobile phone, The phone stays tied to the wall; being reachable anywhere, and the always-on culture that follows, never arrives.