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50 Years Ago, Sputnik Was an Improvised Triumph
caffiend666 sends in an AP article featuring interviews with the old men who launched the first satellite 50 year ago. The story they tell hinges on luck and the drive of one man, Sergei Korolyov, who died in 1966, unheralded in his lifetime. "When Sputnik took off 50 years ago, the world gazed at the heavens in awe and apprehension, watching what seemed like the unveiling of a sustained Soviet effort to conquer space and score a stunning Cold War triumph. But 50 years later, it emerges that the momentous launch was far from being part of a well-planned strategy to demonstrate communist superiority over the West... 'At that moment we couldn't fully understand what we had done,' Chertok recalled. 'We felt ecstatic about it only later, when the entire world ran amok'... And that winking light that crowds around the globe gathered to watch in the night sky? Not Sputnik at all, as it turns out, but just the second stage of its booster rocket."
Who were, and remain, worthy competitors and partners as we reach to the stars.
Congratulations are due on the anniversary of this achievement and to their many achievements since. May they have many more, and may they help elevate this world and all that are in it.
When you look at the history of Soviet space exploration, you often get the impression that "it builds and fits together, launch it" was more often than not the deciding factor.
It's kinda easier if you only have to announce launches AFTER they were successful. If it ain't, it's a test launch. Just like a lot of people play Minigolf.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Amsat.org has a page which features a little blurb as well as sounds from the first satellites. For Sputnik, there are two signal recordings.
.wav and .ra formats.
See http://www.amsat.org/amsat/features/sounds/firstsat.html
This page has the two recordings both in
Navicula hydraulica plena anguilarum est. Omnes castelli tuus nostri sunt. Ed elli avea del cul fatto trombetta.
uhm ... wait ... (annoyed grunt)
This week's book of the week on Radio 4 is "Red Moon Rising", which is all about the building of Sputnik.
Available on Listen Again each day: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/arts/book_week.shtml
Paul Leader
Yes, yes, I know!
I'm actually quite capitalistic, but one must give credit where credit is due. The Russians did a great deal to bring us to where we are today in terms of space exploration. One would hope that, 2,000 years from now, our descendants will all look back at Sputnik and see it as a great triumph of all mankind, not just the accomplishment of one tribe trying to best another. The likelihood of this occurring is, of course, quite small, but one can dream.
I mean, just think about it - these guys put an object in orbit. It's common place today, I know, but to think that they were able to get it to work the first time still amazes me.
Excellent work, comrades. Excellent work!
of Sputnik
http://www.prometheus-music.com/audio/surprise.mp3
written by Leslie Fish
Performed by Gunnar Madsen
published by Prometheus Music http://www.prometheus-music.com/
Ooookay.
As Yahoo is my homepage, it is weird to see a yahoo story, then check Slashdot, and bingo... same headline, same story. I guess I shouldn't complain, though; it was a milestone (I was nine years old) and prompted a big push for science (International Geophysical Year). However, it was seen as a threat, since it was known that the USSR had hydrogen (fusion) bombs and none of us expected to ever grow to adulthood, with all the civil defense movies that warned us about the flash that was "ten times brighter than the day". (tip-of-the-hat to Quicksilver Messenger Service)
To celebrate the event now takes some rewiring internally.
And then America got their ass in gear and realized that science is important and started a program that vastly improved science education and learning science became the "cool" thing to do.
There were some benefits in the existence of the Soviet Union.
I prefer Flambe as apposed flamebait.
Sputnik was a wonderful achievement and deserves to be commemorated. Read here 10 ways you can commemorate Sputnik:
http://rocketry.wordpress.com/2007/09/27/all-things-sputnik/
Especially as Laika was temporary project manager at the time.
I have excellent Karma and I am not afraid to Troll it.
I gotta quit reading motorcycle blogs just before reading Slashdot. All I could think was you had a satellite that leaked oil and every time it was in Earth's shadow the electrics would fail. I guess it really was like a 1960s Triumph -- you get it started once and take the hell off, and hope to God it stays running for the whole trip.
This is not my sandwich.
In case you haven't seen the BBC docu-drama Space Race, watch it.
"In the end, it was the Americans who won the race to the moon, nearly 22 years later."
22 years! What?
I guess TFA meant 12 years.
I hope that after I die the one word people use to describe me is "resurrected."
Well, I don't know about you but I wouldn't call the Apollo program an ICBM that was last-minute sidetracked to launch a satellite, I'm fairly sure it was deliberately made to land on the moon. While you can certainly question what JFK was smoking when he announced it, it seems to me the execution was rather well thought out. When did you last see a multi-billion dollar government program deliver the goods as promised and on schedule?
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
You mean as opposed to the Apollo program which was a well thought out deliberate success?
YES. And who modded you up?
Both Earth and its first satellite were known to be spheres long before these guys ever made this declaration!
First, "the world" did not "gaze at the heavens in awe and apprehension" as Sputnik orbited. America gazed at the heavens in awe and apprehension, but as Americans often need reminding, America is not the entire world.
Second, in the 1950s everyone was shitting themselves over the prospect of a global thermonuclear holocaust, and so the whole space race was the transformation of rocket science from a cool but fairly arcane and quiet field of science into some sort of overhyped modern day mythic single combat, with astronauts painted as knights in white armor championing and defending their tribes, doing some sort of weird imaginary battle in the skies. It wasted a lot of tax money that could have been better spent on American schools and hospitals and Russian food and clothing, and did pretty much nothing towards overthrowing the tyranny of Stalin, who killed many more of his own citizens than Hitler, or making the governments of the US and USSR understand that the other side were in fact humans and not demons or animals.
It did get a whole hell of a lot of astronauts laid like you wouldn't believe, though. I strongly recommend reading Tom Wolfe's "The Right Stuff," even if you have forgotten how to read an entire book, because it's an easy read and very well worth it. I especially love the section where he describes how Chuck Yeager pretty much ascended bodily to Pilot Heaven when he became the first person to break the sound barrier during level flight on October 14, 1947, years before the space race was even so much as a bad dream.
Finally, the USSR had the early lead in unmanned flight but the US eventually won in manned flight, so you could say that in Soviet Russia, people launched rockets to the moon, but in the United States, rockets launched YOU!
"Laika died of a heart attack early in the mission (not too surprising!)"
There was no mention at the time of Laika dying in orbit, indeed the impression given was thet he safely returned to earth. Later on they mentioned him dying during reentry or euthanized by injection in orbit, or died of fright just after take-off, later on in a book written by one of the Russians who actually worked on the project there is mention of the mutt being electrocuted.
davecb5620@gmail.com
A little more background info-- our German guys at Huntsville arsenal could have launched a satellite before the Russians. But our govt decided it would not be cool for the first thing in orbit to be pushed there by a rocket designed to launch a nuclear warhead. So our satellite program was required to start from scratch, with a completely peaceful launch vehicle.
Wow, that is an extraordinary claim. You have some evidence you can show us, right?
Korolyov had a staggeringly hard time under Stalin. Read the Gulag section of his Wikipedia entry ... in Soviet Russia ... ah forget it. Amazing he was able to work at all.
Thing is, we are living in the most peaceful era in human history.
We are living in unexciting times, science and technology are developing slowly and in a linear manner, normal progress instead of breakthroughs. It has been so for the last 50 years. I envy the people that got to see 1880-1960 - they could wake up and see their world upside-down due to a breakthrough(or a war...). Flight, television, nuclear power, space travel, transistors, jets, relativity... They actually had hero-scientists/engineers back then. We don't have a single mainstream-known scientist or engineer nowadays. There is no Bell, Wright, Einstein, Tesla...
Just think about how long it would take to get the atom bomb (or nuclear power station) without WW2, how long it would take to get to space without the cold-war race, how long would it take before we'd have Jet engines without the need for better warplanes.
What is more annoying , is that real space exploration and colonization can only be done in a society that doesn't see money as top priority, and it is sad to see China breaking under pressure and becoming more capitalistic/democratic instead of the the world moving away from that model.
Anyway, the next 40 years will be a total waste. Corporations and not governments direct research nowadays, so don't expect significant space exploration/travel in the near future. Bleh
My Starcraft 2 Blog
"an AP article featuring interviews with the men"
(Boy, the age bias is is everywhere. The captcha for this comment was "grayed".)
and no mention of Nancy Luft?
Recall the mass media complaining about possible radioactive fallout over India, some years ago, from a Russian sputnik that was nuclear powered? Today's sputniks are far more powerful then the ones that caused that 1908 Tunguska Explosion because they are nuclear powered and the Russians are not using nuclear power to only spy, no way! Plus today's sputniks are fully computerized and do things much faster. The Special Sputnik Forces of the Russian Military tell me that they care very easily kill over 95% of all Americans, with their sputniks alone, no nukes, without any warning what so ever, in a matter of a few minutes, any time that they care to do so. But the Russians can only vaporize a limited number of cities and then they will cause a nuclear winter sort of event that will kill them, too. - And we couldn't have that now could we? Carrying a dire warning on the very first page that "USA to be annihilated!", this website, http://hometown.aol.com/nancyaluft/, is the home of dedicated net kook and certifiable paranoid Nancy Luft whom, with her genius level IQ (which would account for her excellent grasp of grammar and sentence construction) and her BA (whoo-hoo!) is trying desperately to warn us all of the terrible dangers of Russia's Special Sputnik Forces. Since time immemorial Russian sputniks (which, she tells us early in the piece, means "travelling companion") armed with gamma rays and ray guns have been causing earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, Presidential assassinations, space shuttle disasters and all sorts of plagues and pestilences. They've been at it for centuries, even before the invention of spaceflight and, heck, even before there was a Russia! The Tunguska impact in 1908 for example wasn't a meteor, it was caused by Russian sputniks! MS, cancer, heart attacks, crop circles and every air crash ever have all been carved out by an orbiting army of Russian killer satellites shooting everything that moves with an array of invisible ray beams. They were also responsible for Nostradamus making his predictions, Jesus walking on water, Edgar Cayce healing people by touch alone and Abe Lincoln winning the Civil War. Oh, and they also caused Mt St Helens to explode and shot down the space shuttle Challenger, which she tried to tell people about but they wouldn't listen. And how does Nancy know these things? The Russians are transmitting their thoughts to her by microwave. She's tried writing to various Presidents about all this but, strangely, they just don't take any notice.
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
I thought that laika died in space from 'overheating", though
its temp was about 38C which was 'normal', and then they concluded they
needed not only to sustain air temp but provide a ventilator for air flow...
something like that...
Makes you wonder what the face of space exploration would look like today if Korolyov had survived long enough to complete the N-series launchers and actually got them to the moon.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
It amazes me that 50 years after Sputnik's launch Americans are still trying to explain why they weren't first in space. If you have any idea of what is involved in designing, building and launching space vehicles, you already know that in this business nothing happens by accident. Not even accidents. So the elderly Russian space pioneers are being modest. It doesn't mean we have to be naive. Of course Sputnik launch was successful on the first try not because the Russians got lucky, but because they knew what they were doing.
The say the entire Politburo wearing nothing but peacock skirts had to dance for hours around Vostok 1 to build up good juju before Gagarin's flight.
"If you have any idea of what is involved in designing, building and launching space vehicles, you already know that in this business nothing happens by accident. Not even accidents."
On the one hand, all things are complex and connected, and very visibly so in the field of rocket science, so perhaps you're arguing for a determinist worldview where everything all fits together in an inevitable single possible pattern, which is an unpopular idea since quantum physics, but still a defensible one if you believe in nonlocal effects or the many worlds interpretation. On the other hand, that sounds more like the kind of paranoid superstition that overtakes engineers who live in mortal terror of a mistake on the scale of the Challenger explosion.
Oh, and speaking of paranoia, bad juju, and mad science, is there some drug I can take that will erase the mental image of that Politboro dance?
"sends in an AP article featuring interviews with the [b]old men [/b]who launched the first satellite 50 year ago." Real impolite summary. How about just men? People? Brilliant men who accomplished an amazing feat 50 years ago? Calling them "old" is insulting and unnecessary.
I really enjoy reading all the comments from US /.ers immediately recalling their moon program. Come on! As much as you would like to think that USA was and remains a superior country, you have to admit, that your precious country wasn't the first one to explore space.
That always reminds me of NASA referring to Yuri Gagarin as to "The first European in space". Even 50 years later the US-American ego is badly hurt by Soviet supremacy in space.
Nevertheless, it is one of the greatest achievements of mankind.
The space race was so loaded with contradictions it's hard to know where to begin. There were the supposedly internationalist Communists turning into flag-waving patriots, the supposedly internationalist American scientific community quietly scooping up cash from rabid American supremacist politicians, and the whole thing was a supposedly vital struggle that looks a lot more like a symbolic one from outside the two competing countries. All in all, I bet the politicians are glad that by the February 1980 they had switched to the Olympics. They're cheaper, safer, more reliably fixed, and full of athletes who don't ask nearly as many awkward questions as scientists and engineers about whether competition for its own sake is really a good idea, whether the competing nations aren't more similar than different, how the money's flowing, whose interests are being served, whether the press is being realistic and honest, and so on. Can't wait for the Beijing Bird's Nest Stadium show in Summer 08.
...for getting 'unusual' and 'Pamela Anderson' in the same sentence using 'boobs', three words which normally only go together with the word 'large' added.
> First, "the world" did not "gaze at the heavens in awe and apprehension" as Sputnik
> orbited. America gazed at the heavens in awe and apprehension, but as Americans often
> need reminding, America is not the entire world.
My parents have told me they "gazed at the heavens in awe and apprehension", and they are not Americans.
When developing software, saying "It builds without errors" means the product is ready for Production!
The timing of this article is interesting to me as I am embroiled in the James Michener novel "Space" while traveling through Canada. Michener was known for his expansive historical sagas and attention to historical detail. In this case, his telling of the flurry of activity within American government and the embryonic space program is quite fascinating, especially now that we know from TFA that the Soviets were just trying something out. Whether the Soviets were trying to show the strength of Communism or merely throwing stuff into the air and seeing if it worked or not, the fact remains they boosted the American efforts in space to the point we are now, regardless of how bogged down we have gotten with the Shuttle in the last 20 years.
I remember my whole family being excited, but my mom was the one who was intrigued by science.
...it was all real, it was all actually going to happen.
At the time my folks perceived it as a triumph for humankind.
My mom's take on it was that it meant all the pictures of those wheel-shaped space stations... Arthur C. Clarke... Werner von Braun on the Disneyland "Tomorrowland" segments... Willy Ley... the Chesley Bonestell murals in the Hayden Planetarium... the George Pal "Conquest of Space" movie (ugh)... (that one might have been after Sputnik)...
I'm not sure when the OMG-they've-seized-the-high-ground, the Russians can drop atom bombs on us stuff started to sink in. Probably some Americans saw it in cold war jingoistic terms from the beginning. Not my family, though. Although it was sort of embarrassing when all the Project Vanguard rockets kept crashing.
Another great historic turning point I remember because almost nobody else noticed it or cared about it: the first Telstar satellite television transmiion. I was at summer school at the time, didn't have my own TV, and had to search around a bit to find a lounge at the school that had one. I tried to interest my techie friends in watching it with me, but nobody cared. The program itself was the most awful thing you can imagine, "entertainment" as organized by government officials. Lots of talking heads. Some boring French dancers, I don't remember what-all.
Telstar. A great moment in history... and all that same out of it was a mediocre pop instrumental number.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
It was 50 years ago. And it's not like it's rocket science, oh wait...
Whatever the cause, the Soviet Union was a worthy adversary and the Cold War stimulated scientific competition. Compared to the Cold War today's War on Terror is a pathetic joke, no new science will come out of it. Our current enemies are religious nuts hiding in caves which despise science and technology as Western aberations.
Troll comment
Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.
Here Comes Sputnik! from the webpage I made 10 years ago at http://www.batnet.com/mfwright/sputnik.html
(and for you old guys with Mosiac and Netscape 1.1, you can see the blinking words of the defunct html blink tag). below some of the text:
The Russians launched the first artificial satellite from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan which demonstrated the technological superiority of Communism. They equipped the Sputnik with transmitters to broadcast on frequencies at 20 and 40 MHz so everyone will know it's up there.
Reactions by Americans:
- Many people did not know how to think of a satellite in orbit. It was too mysterious for them, "What is a 184 pound object in orbit?" "Are they looking down at us?"
- Engineering colleges were flooded with new students the following quarter. It was as if everyone was "joining the army" to take on the Russians in the New Frontier (the govt also provided a lot of funds for engineering schools to fuel new interests in engineering).
- Everyone on Johnston Island in the Pacific were issued sidearms to carry at all times. Johnston Island is so small it only has room for a runway and a hanger for airplanes.
- Students at Case Institute immediately became "Rocket Scientists" and stayed up many late nights discussing various methods of space travel.
- Jim Dawsons, science writer for the Star Tribune, wrote about how his third grade teacher was very nervous at the time. His school at Omaha, Neb., was just a few miles from the Air Force's Strategic Air Command headquarters. A fleet of F-100 fighters appeared in the sky coming right for the school. "MiGs!" the teacher shrieked. "MiGs!" She ran, hysterical, from the classroom, convinced they were about to be nuked by Russian fighter jets. The kids, mostly Air Force brats, ran to the windows to admire the F-100s, the coolest jet of its day.
- Politicians and editorialists began attacking the U.S. educational system for having fallen behind Soviet schools in training people in the sciences and other fields.
- Former President Harry Truman was moved to comment, charging the "persecution" of prominent U.S. scientists by Sen. Joseph McCarthy during the early 1950s had been a setback to the nation's development of satellites and rockets.
- Ross Perot became inspired by the Sputnik to create an electronics dynasty.
- After observing Sputnik, seven year old Franklin Chang-Dìaz of Costa Rica became infatuated with space travel and eventually became a NASA astronaut.
- Tom A. posted on the newsgroup about an American entreprenuer had a "Sputnik" gumball for sale at the local candy store. It was blue and had protrusions sticking out of it to simulate Sputnik's antenna, and it was delicious.
- CIA and other intelligence groups cut down a model of a Sputnik on exhibit at the Brussels World's Fair in early 1958 (a story heard by Paul Dickson, author of "The Shock of the Century")
- Rich Tweedie K6VKT (now a SK) as a high school junior was one of first ham radio operators to hear Sputnik before it was mentioned on American radio and TV news, though many others thought it was a hoax.
Many things happened after October 1957. Here is a brief list of what the United States did:
- Created NASA as the single agency to mobilize U.S. resources to beat the Reds to the stars.
- Created the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA). The purpose behind ARPA was to research new technologies that where too risky to the private industry. In 1969 they created the ARPAnet to research transfer protocols between computers across systems, the predecessor to the Internet.
- Passed the National Defense Education Act.
- Aerospace companies began a new engineer recruitment campaign: All you need is a pulse and a degree.
- United States and Great Britain realign as allies.
- Homer Hickam Jr. and his colleagues created the Big Creek Missile Agency in West Virginia in response to the Sputnik.
There was no mention at the time of Laika dying in orbit, indeed the impression given was thet he safely returned to earth. Later on they mentioned him dying during reentry or euthanized by injection in orbit, or died of fright just after take-off, later on in a book written by one of the Russians who actually worked on the project there is mention of the mutt being electrocuted. - Laika was a she
- Sputnik 2 couldn't reenter, so mechanisms were added to euthanize her. There was enough food and supplies to keep her alive for a week. The mechanism was poisoned food, not electrocution.
- Wikipedia says she died after 5 to 7 hours into the flight because the temperature control system failed.
Also notice that Laika's death is mostly played up in the US, probably becuase of cold war propaganda. The rest of the world knows who Laika is, and is surprised to learn that she died in orbit.
The top US space priority in the late 1950's was developing photo recconnaisance under cover of the Discoverer program.
I remember Sputnik, and I remember that everybody in the US went apeshit when it was launched. Our technological superiority was suddenly in question and there was a big push to start cranking out more engineers and scientists. My own career choice was partially influenced by those events.
You could at least try to spell more than half of their names correctly. The icing on the cake is that you managed to get Torvalds wrong in two different ways.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Look, when USSR did their first nuke, it was regarded throughout the world that they were behind America. So ppl were wanting to work with America. When the world saw USSR launch sputnik, it showed to many countries that USSR was a worthy advisory of America. So many of their leaders started courting USSR's help. All in all, this was a HUGE deal for USSR. So Yes, the World REALLY DID look up. In fact, more importantly, they listened up.
BTW, America putting Man on the moon helped America in the same way.
As to the garbage that we must put ALL of our resources into 1 project is silly. America was a rich country following WWII. The space systems helped push America's economy, which lead to better homes and schools. In fact, more ppl own homes in America than any other country. As to USSR, had they not done the space program, it probably would have hurt them. The reality is that after WWII and Stalin, they were hurting from a pride POV. The space program gave them something to believe in. It became a rally point for them.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Other Soviet space achievements include but not limited to:
* First mammal in space (dog)
* First human in space
* First human to orbit earth
* First images of far-side of the moon
* First images from surface of moon (lander)
* First landing and images from surface of another planet (Venus)
Table-ized A.I.
When you look at the history of Soviet space exploration, you often get the impression that "it builds and fits together, launch it" was more often than not the deciding factor. It's kinda easier if you only have to announce launches AFTER they were successful.
To be fair, the US was also in trial-and-error stage in the early days. Rockets would often blow up on the launch-pad, and the US Ranger moon mission took 7 tries, SEVEN tries, before they had a success (which is a fascinating story in itself, BTW). True, our failures were more public, but non-democracies have always had that advantage.
Table-ized A.I.
And then America got their ass in gear and realized that science is important and started a program that vastly improved science education and learning science became the "cool" thing to do.
And then Asia did the same thing, flooding the market with engineers the same way they did Walmart toys, making sci/tech cheap and NON-cool again. Asia did a "Niksput" on us.
Table-ized A.I.
Article: Because there was no telling how heavy the warhead would be, its R-7 ballistic missile was built with thrust to spare -- "much more powerful than anything the Americans had," Georgy Grechko, a rocket engineer and cosmonaut, told AP. The towering R-7's high thrust and payload capacity, unmatched at the time, just happened to make it the perfect vehicle to launch an object into orbit -- something never done before.
I've heard on NPR that US warheads were smaller than the Soviet's such that they didn't need as powerful rockets to launch missles. It seems it is a combination of US minituration technology, and the view in the US military that nuke quantity was preferrable to size. The largest (test) blast in history is a Soviet nuke.
Thus, the US had to play catch-up with regard to rocket size when the space race started.
Table-ized A.I.
So Sputnik was just another Soviet fraud. Something created for getting there first, rather than actually accomplishing something useful. Exploited for political propaganda purposes more than anything else. And then they credit their accomplishment to someone else with better Party connections. Why am I not surprised?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
...while wearing a monocle:
I do say, my good fellow, you are a gentleman and a worthy adversary. Very worthy indeed! Though your status as a filthy Red is most unfortunate, perhaps a truce is in order on this grand anniversary of your triumph. To many more decades of splendid competition! [loud sip from teacup, pinky finger up]
Geeks like to think that they can ignore politics, you can leave politics alone, but politics won't leave you alone.-rms
Not Sputnik at all, as it turns out, but just the second stage of its booster rocket
That's hardly a revelation. My father took me out in the front yard and showed me the blinking light. He told me you couldn't see the actual satellite and that this was the booster rocket. And he was a bartender. It was common knowledge at the time.
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
Welcome to the latest episode of our show: incoherent rambling!.
Let's do some fact checking: According to the 2003 MARS study, 73% of Americans live in their own home. That's not the highest number in the world by any stretch of the imagination. For example, the most recent survey in Spain put that number at 80%. And Spain isn't what I'd call a very wealthy country: In fact, the high percentage of home ownership is considered a bad thing! Home ownership is not good indicator of the economic health of a country anyway.
Sputnik was nothing like an improvised Triumph, or even an MG. It was more like a 2CV or a Volkswagen Bug.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Yes, but America continues to lead the world in object-oriented programming languages, design, and implementation . . .
In Soviet Russia, time passes you.
On a routine basis after 2009.
Who will that be?
... The soviets launches YOU!
EA-18G
Did he order Vanguard TV3 to explode on the launch pad, too?
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Well, given the current foreclosure rate in the U.S. right now, I'd say it's an excellent negative indicator.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
You realize, don't you, that the global forum you are posting on wouldn't have been possible 50 years ago? The microcomputer and the Internet combine to let anyone publish and respond in real time -- and this is definitely new and powerful. We are just beginning -- yes, just beginning -- to feel the impact of these two epochal breakthroughs.
The Vatican has been a very important centre for astronomical research since well before the space race. A Catholic priest developed the Big Bang theory. The Vatican accepts the reality of evolution and has criticised the American movement to teach "Intelligent Design" in science classes.
Things have changed since 1633 you know (and no, I am not a Catholic.) Maybe you thinking of some other denomination?
...to a man on the moon within the space of only 12 years. Just shows you what is possible.
"Throughout the film, Ingemar tells himself over and over that it could have been worse, reciting several examples, such as a man who took a shortcut onto the field during a track meet and was killed by a javelin and the story of the dog Laika several times, the first creature sent into orbit by the Russians (without any way to get her back down)." (from Wikipedia) An excellent movie - My Life As A Dog - won the Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1987. It was directed by Lasse Halstrom who went on to fame and fortune directing such movies as: # 1999 - The Cider House Rules # 2000 - Chocolat # 2001 - The Shipping News # 2005 - An Unfinished Life # 2005 - Casanova. My Life as a Dog is a wonderful movie, still worth watching if you've not seen it. Ciao, Bonzo with fond memories of Sputnik, Laika, and geek glory days.
Air and Space Smithsonian has a rather different take on who deserves the credit for Sputnik's success in the current issue.
Jeff
He did that with his mind bullets.
Soma: because a gramme is better than a damn.
Korolev (westernized spellings vary) had an even less heralded sidekick, Tikhonravov, who although brilliant, is much less well known, even in Russia. You know, the quiet, nerdy type.
There is an interesting article this month in Smithsonian Air & Space magazine on him this month: http://airspacemag.com/issues/2007/october-november/sputnik_creator.php
And, of course, any large program has lots of total unknowns who all did their part.
Computers obey me.
If I remember correctly, one USA reply to sputnik was the "Echo" satellite.
It was basically a shiney mylar ( new at the time ) balloon that inflated
to a fairly large size after achieving earth orbit.
Echo could be seen very easily by naked eye viewing and traveled across
the sky pretty darn fast.
Seems like punctures or something reduces its size in a few monthes or
its low orbit decayed.
Do not know how long it was before a human made satellite larger than Echo
was (if ever) finally orbited around the earth.
It's not that the U.S. wanted to be bested by the Soviets, but Eisenhower saw a silver lining to the Sputnik. In the previous years, the U.S. was pushing for an "open sky" initiative where anyone could fly over any country in space. The U.S. felt it was important to their spy program, but the Russians balked at the idea of possible U.S. bombs flying over the USSR.
With the launch of the Sputnik, the U.S. no longer had to appear as the aggressor position of insisting on open skies. Now that the Sputnik flew over U.S. territory, the U.S. was free to pursue spy technology satellites orbiting the Soviet Union. By the very early 60s, the U.S. had spy satellites taking pictures over Soviet airspace and literally dropping their film canisters off in Alaska and Northern Canada.
because we haven't gone too much further in space, in 50 years... http://paullevinson.blogspot.com/2007/09/sputniks-50th-anniversary-sad-that-we.html
I'm utterly certain that Linux and Boobs have been in the same sentence before. :-P
No, no, silly! You are udderly certain.
.
- aqk
F U