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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!
Ooookay.
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/
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."
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
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...
Absolutely. The little beeping ball that ramped up both the space race and the cold war.
Six in my case but I still remember the adults pondering the implications of this Russian "thing" right over their very own heads.
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...
"Italy for thirty years under the Borgias had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed, but produced Michelangelo, DaVinci, and the Renaissance. And Switzerland had brotherly love and five hundred years of democracy and peace. And what did they produce? The cuckoo clock." -Orson Welles from the 1949 picture "The Third Man"
This is a really fantastic movie speech, and it's a damn shame that it's just a bunch of horseshit. It is true that public research funding for areas other than defense has weakened greatly, which sucks, and left corporations and hobbyists to pick up the slack, but the NSF is still doing a hell of a lot more than any public institution in Tesla's day.
As to lack of conflict breeding lack of innovation, this is precisely where you are wrong. Wars and other great pressures push inventions into the public eye-- how many people rode in an airplane before WWII compared to during?-- but inventors prefer to work when there aren't any bombs falling around them. I could belabor the point with examples, but I'm not even going to bother. Just look at anyone who's done anything at all with computers in the last half century. For starters.
Furthermore, the pace of technological progress and its impact on people's lives continues to accelerate. Plastic surgery, cell phones, commercial rocket flights, myspace. And we do have hero scientists and engineers, a trend that increased massively during the dotcom boom and never completely reversed, and was ironically led by Bill Gates, who is not a hero to most scientists and engineers, but was popularly portrayed as a hero engineer until about 1998 or so when the antitrust lawsuits really kicked in.
Finally, as to it being sad to see China becoming capitalistic, I would rather have a humane culture than an innovative one, but since America has been leading the world in both, it's a false opposition. And as to it being sad to see China becoming democratic, well, that rather remains to be seen.
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.
Actually, its kind of true (but with a different spin, of course).
The fact was, that the US program deemed the nuclear missile program as too sensitive and secret to let scientist mess with it, so they were forced to do a parallel development with the vanguard program (which of course lagged behind without the military budget).
The seperation was there, but the reason wasnt one of public image, but of paranoid secrecy.
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
"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.
> 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.
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.
Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.
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.
I don't think you are correct. You are probably thinking of MX-774 which was never sucessfully launched; the first real launch was Atlas A in 1957 around the same time as the Soviet R-7. Moreover, it was used for both military and civilian purposes.
Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.
Saying that "science has reached it's limit" today is just as foolish as saying it in 1907 or 1807 would have been (and people did). It can be hard for a non-scientist to understand what current research consists of, and it can be even harder for a non-scientist to guess at what of current research will directly result in visible applications, but that doesn't mean that science has stopped - just that you can't see it move.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
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.
Today's amazing world of new discovery is the internet, man.
As a child of the 80's, I couldn't imagine living in a world where I didn't have instant access to infinite information, as well as interaction with people of all classes, races, and nationality. The internet is today's final frontier, it is the great equalizer, it is the breaker of barriers and opener of doors - and eyes. This is where social progress is being made. If you want to talk scientific progress as well, the modern day Einstein, Bell, and Tesla are now (in no particular order) Bram Cohen, Shawn Fanning, and Justin Frankel.
The internet is the most important thing humankind has produced, adapted, and adopted in the past quarter century. It is capable of breaking corporate monopolies as well as building massive revenue streams; capable of watching all the citizens, as well as watching all the watchers; capable of providing a channel for infinite entertainment, as well as many many jobs; capable of bringing all the peoples of the world together. Believe it; the internet is humankind's most valuable resource going into the 21st century.
~Wx
sig?
Now that I have your attention, what's the deal now with Vista SP1? Or are you in another department at MS?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.