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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.
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.
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!
Actually, a lot of Russian space technology was built on old technologies and as a result was quite reliable. For example, the R-7 rocket used to launch Sputnik used technologies from 20-s and there's a story that burning logs were used to ignite the first stage engines. But at the same time computer modeling (yes, even at that time!) was used to compute boosters parameters.
BTW, R-7 and its successors have become the most successful launch systems so far.
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.
My point expressed in GP still holds.
Just ask NASA who could rescue a shuttle stuck in orbit before they ran out of air/water/food, not NASA they couldn't get their "reusable" shuttle in orbit in less than 56 days, whereas the Russians sensibly had a Soyuz or Progress craft on standby at all times to mount a rescue of their Cosmonauts?
Puteulanus fenestra mortis
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!
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.
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.